


The Fugue Feast Indoctrination of an Innocent

by Atypicalgamergirl



Series: Aethyr Dreams: Forbidden Tales of Dunwall and Beyond [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games), LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-11-23 15:09:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 50,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11404959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atypicalgamergirl/pseuds/Atypicalgamergirl
Summary: Over the years in his position as Overseer with the Abbey of the Everyman, Teague Martin had become increasingly obsessed with the Void and like many before him - allowed it to consume him fully, stopping at nothing to find a way to win an audience with The Outsider. In the final days of 1830, Overseer Martin acquired a book outlining a ritual so unspeakably blasphemous that an Overseer performing it would surely open the door to the Void wide, and Martin would catch the Outsider's attention at last. He had only to wait for the Fugue Feast to unleash his errant mind, and feed his rampant hunger.





	1. In the Beginning

Martin looked down at his pocketwatch. It was not like Daud to be so late on a promised dispatch. Perhaps his man had been delayed, or worse. Any other dispatch wouldn’t have Martin nearly as antsy – but this particular package was damned near apocalyptic blasphemy bound in a single volume. Daud generally sent his dispatch runners out very well armed and highly capable of beating seasoned soldiers and guards to death with little more than bare hands. If this runner had been caught, the gods help him – no weapons or arms would save a person carrying something like this from the wrath of the Abbey. He was getting anxious waiting – trying not to imagine the worst. Martin aimlessly looked out of the side window of the small non-descript apartment. He could just see the roof of the Hounds Pit Pub from his window – a far better view than from his other window. That window looked down to a sheer drop between buildings known as Dead Man Alley.

Some years ago, a man – or what was left of him, had been found at the end of the alley torn apart and largely devoured. It was determined at a later time that the teeth marks on the gnawed and splintered bones were small but definitively human. There had not been enough soft tissue left to determine the victim’s identity. After a proper fruitless waiting period for someone to come forward to identify or claim the body, the coroner released the remains – such that they were, to the Abbey. The Abbey had announced that a proper burial with cleansing rites had been performed. Anything to keep the superstitious ilk calm, Martin supposed. He knew from experience now that it was far more likely that the remains had been dumped with a bucket of lime chaser into the slurry pit by the docks off Holger Square where dead Abbey hounds were thrown to rot in the damp open air.

He paced the worn floor, lighting a cigarette to help pass the time. Martin had owned this property for a while now under a different name - a name he hadn't used in a long time, and while he no longer called it his home he did use it as a private study and storage for his collection of things that may well see him hang if the contents were to be revealed. Martin had the gift of a silver tongue – not _just_ silver, but highly polished and flawless Morley silver but he knew that he would never be able to talk himself out the death sentence that would be brought on to him by possession of this particular collection.

He had become increasingly obsessed with the Outsider and like many before him - allowed it to consume him fully, willing to stop at nothing to win an audience with The Outsider, or at the very least catch his attention. Martin had the ways and means to sniff out any lead, regardless of how faint - from the protection of his position as a trusted and respected Overseer with the Abbey. He ignored no lead and left no leaf unturned in his hunger for a taste of the Void. Martin savored every confessed word tortured from captured heretics or witches, every blasphemous note found in a dark corner of an abandoned alley, every forbidden charm found in ruined abandoned buildings, amassing a collection of ephemera, books and trinkets that he studied often looking for a single clue he may have overlooked to point him to the doorway to the Void.

Through his long-time connection with Daud, he had been able to arrange, at a discount, the procurement of one of the blackest books that he had ever come across in his studies. Only one was said to have ever been produced, and no one had dared all throughout its history to make copies or even transcriptions of notes from it. Its very existence had been debated for hundreds of years. How Daud had gotten it, he was not sure – but he reckoned that it had to do with his previous tenure with the Academy. Only one person that Martin knew of would have possibly had possession of such a tome, and only Daud would have had the sheer nerve and ability to steal it out from under him. Rumors of Anton Sokolov’s depraved attempts to reach the Outsider paled in comparison to some of the things that Martin knew for a fact that he had attempted. This book was said to carry within its pages methods which rendered all of Sokolov’s past blasphemous attempts childish by comparison.

Years ago - long before he took on the name Teague Martin, Daud and he had crossed paths by chance on similar missions and the two of them quickly established their common interest in the Void, and specifically in finding the Outsider. Each of the men – young at the time, had taken a path that was most likely to help themselves and the other in their search – Daud had entered the Academy, and under his new identity, Martin had joined up with the Abbey.

It had taken Daud very little time to find what he was looking for. His rustication from the Academy was the stuff of legend, and sure enough within months of being shown the door at the sharp toe of Sokolov’s boot - Daud had been marked by the Outsider. How that must have galled Sokolov! Martin wondered if this book had been involved in some way – if Daud had himself used it to reach the Void. After Daud was marked, their paths diverged, though they still called upon one another for favors. Daud knew that Martin’s search for the Outsider had continued to be futile, and he had very little to offer by way of instructing Martin how to best find his own way to the Outsider. Daud had explained that there was little a man could do that would attract the attention of the Outsider – it was usually something unexpected and generally unintended that prompted it. Martin had decided to go by way of the unexpected, and Daud had provided him with the means to do so. What he suspected was in this book would be horrifically unexpected for an Overseer of the Abbey to perform, but Martin intended to do just that.

Finally, he heard a sharp tapping at the door that pulled him out of his reverie, and he waited for the second series of taps listening for the correct rhythm.* Satisfied with what he heard, Martin opened the door to Daud’s man and found instead a young half-grown dark-skinned girl, thin as a whip with a mean-looking face. Her blue Whaler getup swam on her small, but no doubt strong frame. The girl begrudgingly apologized for lagging and then sullenly handed over the package, with a letter neatly tucked under the twine wrapped around the rough brown paper. Martin took the package that the girl handed over, tempering his stunned outrage. Daud had entrusted the safe delivery of this unspeakable book to someone – Whaler or not, who was barely out of childhood! Martin twisted his mouth into a cold small crescent – some semblance of a smile, and nodded his head to the girl who returned his icy demeanor with a grim nod of her own. Before he could so much as reach his hand up to close his door the girl was gone in a flash. He shook his head, impressed with the girl’s grasp of her nascent abilities but made a mental note to ask Daud what the everloving **fuck** was he was thinking to send a child to deliver such a thing.

Martin breathed a little easier with his door shut. He had not seen so much as a spark of recognition in the girl’s eyes, but out of uniform and bearing a day and a half of heavy growth on his face few would recognize him as Overseer Martin.

He took a deep breath, and sat down in his old beat-up chair and held the package in his lap. He resisted every urge to rip into the package, tearing at the knotted twine with his teeth. He was determined to keep himself under tight control, as he tended to do in all things. He slid the letter out from under the twine and unfolded it, his hands trembling slightly. The thick creamy vellum had but one line written in a scratchy thin tilting hand: Remember the Eighth Stricture.

Martin felt the breath go out of him in an instant. He had never, not even once - discussed with anyone outside of the innermost circles of the Abbey the hotly debated and suppressed Eighth Stricture: The Acediac Temperament. It’s very mention was forbidden outside of the Abbey, and had all but been scrubbed from history as if it had never existed. The strictures were blueprints for strength of will, the practice of making conscious choices to stay on the clear path. The Eighth Stricture was about willfully allowing the utter destruction of the self, and its warning clear: the end sum of succumbing was invariably suicide. Martin looked down at the wrapped book in his lap, his mind harboring only the faintest of doubts: was Daud implying that embarking on this task would lead to suicide? Martin had fought many physical and mental battles in his time, but of one thing he had an iron-clad certainty: he would never commit suicide.

Martin cleared his mind, enforcing his will over his doubts. No, he had come too far to turn back now. The Fugue Feast was approaching, and there was much preparation to do. He tore the paper from the book, opened its musty pages and began to read.

**************

An hour or so later, Martin looked up from the book finding himself in near total darkness. The material in the book had so fully captured his attention that he had read into darkness, only the difficulty of seeing the words stopping his intense study of the diagrams and words therein. He stood and stretched, and after pulling his shutters closed, lit the old whale oil lamps and poured a stiff drink from one of the many bottles he kept in his cupboard over the sink. He stood over the sink, drinking the fiery liquor straight – not tasting or feeling its burn as it suffused his blood.

He was thunderstruck at what he had found. The book had not had a single thing about opening a door to the Void. The book had been written in a dialect that predated Isles Common, but through his many years with the Abbey, Martin had amassed vast knowledge of various belief systems and their mother-languages and was able to translate in his head the meaning and intent of the ritual described in the book. No, the book had not given instructions on opening a door – it had in fact, outlined in much detail the sole way to _summon_ the cythraul-hunleff – the nightmare demon of the Void – the very avatar of Ctoggha himself that was known as ‘The Outsider.’ Martin was stunned by the implication of the ritual. He would no longer have to look for the Outsider. He would, by the means he found within the book compel the Outsider to appear to _him_. He would pull the Outsider from the Void, and … then what?

Martin drained the last of his drink, only to find his cup empty – his rapidly spinning mind forgetting that he had finished it already. Never had he considered that this was a possibility. The idea of it was terrifying, thrilling. To have the power to force a _god_ – The Outsider - to his audience was unthinkable, but his mind was already deep in thought plotting how to best bring this ritual to fruition. He understood now that while Daud had undoubtedly studied the material therein, he likely had never used this book, considering the nature of the ritual. Daud may have had issues with the methods and delivery, but Martin certainly didn’t. He was nearly sick with a desire to get started, but had to force himself to pace the preparations to coincide with the Fugue Feast. Anything outside of that window of time would be his immediate and likely very painful death were he to be caught at any point during the ritual. He wasn’t entirely sure that he was safe even from within the timeless days and nights of the Feast, but his rabid desire had overwhelmed his sense of self-preservation. He was hungry to his core - ravenous, and he intended to gorge himself on this ritual – feeding this emptiness inside of himself once and for all. And after the Feast? If the ritual carried through its promise, it would no longer matter. Nothing would be able to touch him after this.

He grabbed the book from the small table beside his chair and made his way to his study, snuffing the lamps along the way. In his study, he bent over the book on his desk, huddled in the single small circle of light from his lamp and began taking notes. Within a half-hour, there in front of him written neatly on his pad of paper was a comprehensive list of the items he would need for the ritual – most of which he already owned. He studied the diagrams carefully, committing to memory the sigils and placement of them along the rows of circles and the points of the cardinal directions representing the four elements. There was a fifth direction – a fifth element noted on the diagram, and it was through this that the Outsider would be compelled to appear.

Martin had learned from this book that there was only one entity in all existence that had the power to call to the Outsider, its siren call capable of piercing the aethyr of the Void and compelling his presence. This entity could be called into physical form from within a human vessel through a sacrifice during this ritual – and in turn would send her call shattering through the Void, bringing the physical form of the Outsider to her altar. 

All Martin needed was a supple young woman, an innocent untouched and ignorant of her own latent female desires and the power that would be unleashed when Martin forced them to painful wakefulness within her. Her innocence, the blood of her awakening the only acceptable sacrifice to the wrach-hunllef – the nightmare witch known as the Mother of Darkness, the animus to the Outsider’s anima.


	2. Day 1

There were seven days left before the Fugue Feast, and as it had been for as long as Martin could remember, the days leading up to the Feast were filled with increasing loads of paperwork as the year ticked to an end. Today was no different. When Martin got to his desk this morning, his inbox had – as if by magic – been filled from seemingly empty from the night before and the papers were threatening to topple over the edges of the box onto the floor. He sighed inwardly and greeted his fellow Brothers in the Archive clerking office in his blandly pleasant way and set about the business of his day.

In the just the first hour, he had typed up the necessary papers to approve the renovation of a section of the wolfhound kennels and sent along a request for proper wolfhound burials along to the High Overseer. There was a couple who had badly bungled the proper forms for their marriage certificate, and then required help to fix it. Another handful of complaints about Granny Rags. Gathering up the requests for eulogies, assigning them to various Brothers, and the adjusting the Brothers’ schedules accordingly. Following up on the report of a rumored Void-deformed infant born in the Distillery District to a courtesan employed at the Golden Cat . Wading through hip-deep red tape to arrange and schedule an audience for the High Overseer with Empress Jessamine and the new spymaster Hiram Burrows. And so on and so on. At first it was difficult for Martin to keep his mind clear for mundane matters, but within minutes his mind was working with the same clockwork precision as always – cutting swaths through the mounting paperwork.

Just before the break for lunch, he was interrupted by Brother Juibal who had the desk in the corner across from his own. He approached Martin’s desk with an odd look on his face holding a paper in one hand and a small book in the other. Martin looked up at him, struggling to hide his irritation. He had hoped to finish up the review of the mess hall budget proposal before breaking for lunch but Brother Juibal apparently had other things in mind for him to do. “Yes, Brother?” Martin asked as kindly as he could under the circumstances.

“Brother Martin, I have this heresy report and I wanted to show you, and …” 

“Brother Juibal,” Martin interrupted, gesturing toward his inbox, “forgive me but as you can see I can’t take on another…”

“Brother Martin, you were mentioned by name in the confiscated material.”

Martin felt his heart hammer in his chest, and calmly asked to see the report. Brother Juibal handed the heresy report over to him along with a small leather-bound journal, looking mildly embarrassed. “Brother Martin, I am conflicted in this matter. I am not certain that this counts as heresy. Perhaps you should review these and decide on your own.” Brother Juibal turned and went back to his desk and continued to go about the business of digging himself out of his own pile of paperwork.

Martin skimmed the report, combing quickly through the words to find the instances of his name. After his mind calmed some, he was able to read the report more thoroughly, and after he thumbed through the pages of the journal, it became clear that this was not a matter of heresy. It would be if he said so, however. He could not believe his luck, and the timing could not be better. He marked the report to investigate, and due to the unusual nature of the findings requested that he personally be assigned to the interrogation with an option to counsel as necessary in the event that no heresy was found. He included the necessary form to reserve exclusive use of the room, with a ‘by request only’ stipulation for Overseer backup. He took the report and the form directly to the High Overseer’s office, and without so much as a glance at either the report or the form - or at Martin for that matter, Campbell had his secretary mark it approved, and sent Martin on his way.

When Martin returned to his desk, he thanked Juibal and said that after discussion with the High Overseer the situation was far more serious than it appeared. He immediately typed up the arrest orders, and then sent them via courier to the guard commander to have them carried out. After sending the courier along with the orders, Martin headed over to the Interrogation room.

There had been no interrogations scheduled this week, which was unusual for the days leading up to the Fugue Feast. Usually there was an influx of heretics around this time, brought in under warrants which the High Overseer wanted to clear before the year’s end. There had been times in the past where the room was used _during_ the Feast for various purposes, but he had heard no whispers or rumors of it being used this year. Perhaps those masochistically-inclined of his brethren had found other means of self-flagellation for this year's Feast.

He climbed the small flight of stairs to the observation room and stood looking down over the floor, checking for anything that he may want to clear out before the arrival of his interviewee. The cleaning crew had been diligent, and the relative fallow time for torture had left the floor as clean as it was bound to get. The devices were put away, and the hose unhooked. The room was frightening enough without those accoutrements – and he wouldn’t need them in any case. He had an entirely different sort of thing in mind. He would not need the audiograph machine, nor would he need to take notes – but just in case, he made sure to check that there were pads of paper and some fresh pens ready. He made a note to himself to requisition a pitcher of water and a couple of glasses, and to remember to bring his flask.

Even as excitement wormed through his gut, he was admittedly a little nervous. He knew that this was a bell that he would not be able to unring, and he was not sure yet just how hard he intended to ring it. When the room was to his satisfaction, he headed back over to his office to force himself to continue with his paperwork and wait for interviewee to arrive. The afternoon passed quickly, and Martin managed to keep his paperwork decreasing at a faster rate than it was increasing. Finally, he reached a stopping point. There were no official hours in which work needed to be done by the Brothers in the clerking area of the Archive office, but they generally worked from mid-morning until the sun started to sink low in the sky. One by one the Brothers dismissed themselves, leaving Martin sitting alone at his desk. He had hoped that the interrogation could have started today. He couldn’t imagine what could be the problem, unless the warrants had piled up. Again. He groaned inwardly, already dreading the implications of even higher stacks of paperwork. Warrants and arrest records were the most tedious and meticulous of all the paperwork that he had the displeasure of doing.

He was pulling on his jacket and getting ready to leave when two Overseers walked into the office removing their masks and ready to report on the arrest. Martin’s heart sped up as he listened patiently to the relatively uneventful arrest. They had detained the suspect with little fanfare, and had taken the prisoner to the interrogation room and were awaiting further instruction. Martin buttoned his jacket, and pulled on his gloves. From his desk drawer, he pulled his mask. The Overseers offered to come along for backup, the mocking tone only partly hidden in their voice. They bade Martin a good night and a lighthearted ‘good luck’, and slipped their masks back on and headed out into the evening to serve their remaining arrest orders. When the Overseers were gone, Martin went into the small corner washroom in the Archive and studied himself in the mirror. He ran some water through his hair, and splashed water on his face. He was tired, and looked it. His five-o-clock shadow looked closer to a ten-the-next-night shadow, and there were faint dark crescents under his eyes. He dried his hands, and pulled on his gloves. It was time for the interrogation.

**************

He stood in the observation room, sipping at a glass of fresh water, looking down at the girl. He had the lights shining directly on her, and she could not see him. He studied her for a few minutes as she sat quiet and goggle eyed in the chair, looking around in terrified wonder at the stark chamber. She was young, but certainly not a child. He was not sure what to make of her appearance. She was thin and angular, the various junctures of her bone structure jutting out here and there against the flat planes of her form. He had expected soft curves and dimpled porcelain skin from the well-worded gentle prose he had read about himself in her confiscated diary – her words read like she was a puff-bun - a typical elegantly-educated aristocrat’s daughter.

This girl looked more like a wild Morley spitfire – her copper and fire-red hair coiled and corkscrewed and frizzed around her head where it had escaped the elaborate ties and pins that she had used to tame it and hold it fast. There were so many freckles – freckles on top of freckles in stark relief against her pasty white skin, and her features were sharp and refined - had she been just on the other side of ugly, her features would have appeared feral and ratlike. Her mouth gaped open in near shock, and he could see the small white points of her slightly crooked eyeteeth. She did not struggle against the restraints. Her thin limbs lay limply in the oversized fetters. She seemed listless – out of character for what he would expect a girl of this ilk to be. He hoped the Overseers had not knocked her about when taking her in. She would be useless to him without full use of her senses. He decided it was time to say hello to this strange looking red-haired girl. He slipped on his mask, grabbed a small wooden folding chair, and walked down the stairs, allowing his bootheels to make perhaps a bit louder than necessary clacking as he made his way over to the girl. She watched him walking toward her, his tall form backlit such that only barest hints of his uniform and mask were visible to her, her eyes widening at his approach. Martin unfolded the chair with a single rough jerk and slammed it down in front of her and sat down. He pulled the small confiscated journal from his pocket – opening it and pretending to read it for the first time. The girl’s face paled – going from fresh-milk to wheyfaced at the sight of her private journal in an Overseer's hands, open to reveal what she had written there about Overseer Martin. He closed the journal, and held it up as if to read the name foil stamped into the leather amongst the elaborate twists of silver, red and black formed and stamped deeply into the leather in an elegant pattern of thorns and flowers. He leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows on his knees. He pulled off his mask and ran a gloved hand through his hair before looking up at her. He smiled coldly, and said “Hello, Rose.”


	3. Day 1, Part 2: Interrogation of Rose Everleigh

The girl looked at him, wide-eyed in shock. She started to stammer something but Martin cut her off with a gesture of his gloved hand. He narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice. “Recite your strictures, child.”

Every interrogation started this way – or at least Martin’s did. He didn’t care if the person knew their strictures or not. By the time they were in this room, the perfectly-recited strictures could spill from their mouths in a shower of solid gold coins and it wouldn’t matter - nor would it save them. He would listen, and watch and observe – never failing to be fascinated at how much a person would tell of themselves without realizing they were doing so. So much information, the most useful kind really - could be found hiding in a person’s expressions, tone of voice, appearance – even their smell. It was a habit of his from long ago – ask the questions you don’t care about, and watch carefully as the answers you need fall right into your lap. Worked every time. There was much he needed to know about this girl before committing her to the ritual, and the night was young.

Her hair, while wild – was clean and her skin appeared smooth and free of blemishes. Her teeth were white. Her clothing was soft from years of wear and wash, perhaps handed down – but it was clean and well-mended. Her care and attention to her general appearance spoke of one whose status clearly had been higher at one time. Her posture was unpracticed but generally good. Her bone structure was sound as well – so she was naturally thin, and not malnourished. She did not appear to carry any hint of disease or illness – her skin had no bruising, except for perhaps what would appear on her upper arms in the next day or so from the Overseers’ strong grips. She looked to have a wiry strength along with good health. She would need it to survive the process. If she did not, then Martin hoped that he could at least get her to the point he needed first.

He leaned close as if to better hear her stumbling breathy words. He breathed in deeply, evenly and steadily, catching her scent. She smelled of fresh sweat and soap, and underneath he caught the scent he was looking for: fear. There were many types of fear, and each had its own specific note – there was the rank fear of the guilty, the acrid fear of the liar and many, many more - then there was the fear he was smelling in this girl: the fear of those who have accepted their imagined wrongdoings, and have resigned themselves to punishment. It was rare – this innocent self-doubt and willingness to submit. It had a slightly sour-bitter smell but lacked the reek of adrenaline – it reminded him of freshly crushed hemlock. It was exactly what he had been hoping for.

When she finished her recitation, he narrowed his eyes and leaned in further toward her, lowering his voice. “Tell me, child – do you know why you are here?”

The girl’s lip trembled slightly and looking down she said quietly, “Heresy, sir.”

“And your heresy?”

“Um, sir … my diary, it...”

“Your heresy child, in your own words.”

The girl trembled and looked miserable as she looked down into her lap, saying nothing. Martin stood up and brought a hand to her chin and tilted her face up, with just a hint of roughness - so that her eyes met his. He towered over her, back straight and jaw set with a particularly stern look on his face. He savored the first faint flickers of primal fear in her eyes as she shrank back into the chair and he found it difficult to resist gripping her face harder. There was something about this girl that was waking a side of himself that had lain dormant for some time.

“When you speak to me, you will look me in the eyes at all times. Is that clear?”

A tear slid from her eye, and rolled down her face. He swept his gloved thumb over her cheek, catching the tear – smearing it into her skin. His touch was gentle under the rough nap of the oiled suede of his glove. He slid his thumb down to her slightly open mouth, and drew it across her bottom lip. She held his gaze, her eyes wet with tears. Martin noted that there was no change in her eyes when he ran the rough pad of his gloved thumb across her lip – her eyes retained the watery wash of fear, and now perhaps uncertainty as well. He was pleased – there was no more overt signal of “I’m going to take what I want of you” than that, and it was clear that his action seemed to confuse rather than arouse her. He pulled his hand away from her face, and sat back down in front of her.

“Now, tell me.”

The girl began to speak. She confessed to him that she had written that it had been her desire to know what it would be like to press her lips on his and to feel his arms around her. She had written about how handsome he was in his uniform, and how she longed to touch the roughness of his face. She admitted to watching him from afar as he made his way through the Old Port District from time to time, first watching this Overseer out of curiosity and fear but when she saw him without his mask the first time she began watching him in far different ways. Her prattle was that of a schoolgirl, talk of wanting to marry – wondering what his voice sounded like and so on. She was clearly uncomfortable, and was blushing madly under her freckles, the red splotches spreading from her cheeks down to her neck. She began talking faster, as they all did when in this position. The less the interrogator said, the more the prisoner seemed compelled to confess.

He let her continue on, listening for any further clues of his sloppiness. He tried not to take off his mask when walking the streets of Dunwall, but he often did – and nearly always when he got within eyesight of his apartment. She did not seem to know about the apartment, which was a great relief. He had always been very careful not to be seen going in or out of it, and he was the only resident in the otherwise empty building. The other residents had been compelled to leave, and those who hadn’t found themselves coming down with a bad case of heresy. It took next to no effort to have the building declared shuttered. He reckoned that it was by blind luck alone that she hadn’t followed him there and seen him going in. He wasn’t worried about her as much – when he was finished with her, she would not leave alive but he _was_ worried about anyone else that could have seen him, or been watching him. Eventually her talk petered out, and once again she sat in silence looking at him, not daring to look away from him – waiting for something, anything.

Martin looked impassively at her – purposefully not reacting to her words, and then began to ask her questions. It was time to be a little more direct.

“Tell me – what lies in your heart, that you would have such thoughts about an Overseer, child?”

The girl blushed harder, if that was possible and admitted that she had not thought about his being an Overseer, just that she had seen him as a man after he had unmasked.

“What do you know of these things that you have confessed to me?”

She was clearly having trouble keeping her eyes to his with this question, but she let him know that she knew only that which she had read in penny novels and ballads. She had never known the touch of a man in that way.

“Have you known your own touch?”

A look of confusion came over her face. Of course she had – she touched herself all the time, when eating, bathing, getting dressed, fixing her hair. She genuinely did not catch his meaning, and Martin was satisfied. The instructions for the ritual preparation had been clear – the ritual would only work through the sacrifice of innocence: complete innocence willingly given over to blood and pain. He didn't have much time to get her to that point, but by the time the Fugue Feast was upon them he was determined to see her not just giving over her innocence, but begging for him to take it from her in every possible way.

Martin was quiet for a moment, and then asked if there was anything else that she should tell him. She nodded slowly, her eyes solemn, and several times she opened her mouth to speak but stopped. Martin said that he already knew what there was to know, and that she may as well confess it fully. He was not prepared for her answer.

“I’ve seen him in my dreams. The Outsider.”


	4. Day 2

“Stand up. There you go. You were dreaming.”

Martin awoke in a daze at his desk with Brother Juibal standing over him – nudging his shoulder and urging him to his feet. Disoriented, Martin stumbled to his feet. What? Where was he? He had just been belowdecks on the Vigilant not more than five minutes ago! No, wait. He had been dreaming, yes. He stood wobbling for a moment, trying to get his bearings.

“Did you sleep here all night? I don’t know how you could have slept through last night’s storm!”

There had been a storm? What? Martin hadn’t heard a storm at all and started to question Juibal.

Juibal stopped him. “Wait, quiet – here comes Campbell’s secretary.”

Campbell’s secretary came in, holding a handful of papers in his hand clearly making a beeline for Martin. “Ah yes, there you are Brother Martin”, he said in his usual unctuous unpleasant tone “this paperwork you had me sign yesterday will not do.”

Martin cleared his throat, quickly forming an explanation before being asked for one. Before he could speak, Campbell’s secretary continued.

“We show that your heretic case finally arrived last night, but your forms don’t say from where. I will need these forms rewritten in full and resubmitted before you take any further action with the detainee. No, not amended - _rewritten_. Thank you in advance for your cooperation, Brother Martin. Good day, Brother Juibal. Brother Martin.” He nodded his head, holding the nod just long enough to be on the aggravating side of obnoxious and then made his way back over to the High Overseer’s office.

Martin took a deep breath and let it out in a very long and audible sigh. Brother Lambert. What a prick. At least there wasn’t much more paperwork to do. Of course, given last night’s conversation with Rose – perhaps a few things needed to be amended, or _rewritten_ after all. He began taking notes, the memories still fresh in his mind:

**************

He had not reacted at all when Rose told him that she had dreamed of the Outsider. He merely nodded, and said ‘go on’ – while nearly screaming inside. So she carried him inside her, did she? Well, that would make it even easier – he would yank that elusive black-eyed bastard straight out of the Void through her cunt if he had to. As she talked, he felt himself calming. Just as she had shown a vazey romanticism in her journal, so then did she in describing her dream. No, she hadn’t _seen_ the Outsider – she just knew he was there. She had ‘felt’ him waiting on some tall tower somewhere, sometimes it had been a lighthouse or a tall building but each time she dreamed of him waiting for her somewhere – she had found herself locked out of access to him, unable to go to where he waited. Martin knew exactly how that felt – being locked from access in such a way, but as for a heretical Outsider dream – this was not one of them. That was simply not how Outsider dreams were. The Outsider was not a romantic fop from one of her penny novels, playing coy.

He wondered if she had some sort of disturbing fixation on the Outsider, something beyond the type that he and Daud had struggled with. Did she perhaps harbor a subconscious longing to … _fuck_ the Outsider?! No matter how Martin tried to slither around various questions in his rapid-fire way to catch her up in some lie or trick her into confessing - he was not able to pull anything out of her that suggested that she was anything other than puzzled by these dreams. No, she cared nothing at all about the Outsider and didn’t know why she was having these dreams. She would prefer not to have these dreams at all. Odd, Martin could not think of a single person who had been infected by this black heresy that did not find themselves wanting more. And here was this girl, rejecting what others would give their souls - _literally_ to experience just once. Extraordinary.

Martin knew an opportunity when he saw one, though – this was something that would perhaps help to speed things along. He cleared his throat and then allowed his voice to take on a decidedly icier tone that he had used up until now.

“It is good that you did not try to lie, child. Surely you are aware you stand accused of being a witch?”

Rose’s jaw dropped, and her eyes shot wide open. She could be nothing further from a witch – never once had she even so much as _seen_ a heretical object. She had mentioned her dreams of the Outsider to no one outside of Martin. She pleaded with him to believe her. He did believe her, but that was beside the point. He carried on as if he clearly did not.

“As per protocol, I will need to perform a cursory examination of your person to look for any marks. I am going to unlock these fetters, and you will undress and so help me child – if you take so much as one step to try to escape, I will beat you unconscious and leave you in the dirt for the hounds to eat. Do not try me.”

Rose’s lip trembled and she looked down, tears filling her eyes and spilling into her lap. Martin stood, and when her chin lifted to watch him stand he popped her with an open hand on the cheek – a pop far louder than it was hard and it certainly didn’t hurt her, but it got his message across.

“Do you not remember that you are to keep your eyes to mine at all times? Unless I look away first, you are not to look away from me. You do not want to know what I will do to you if you disobey me again.”

He unlocked her fetters – freeing her hands and feet. She rubbed her wrists, and walked to the spot that he indicated in the middle of the room. She stood before him, hands clasped in front of herself, awaiting orders.

“Now, undress.”

She started to open her mouth to protest, but Martin had to do no more than narrow his eyes and tilt his head to the side ever so slightly and she closed her mouth and began to remove her clothes. Her hands were shaking as she undid her shirt buttons one by one. She pulled off her shirt, and held it out questioningly and Martin simply nodded, indicating that she should proceed. There was nowhere to put it, so she simply dropped it. She unlaced her breeches, and then pulled them down and shrugged off her shoes and stockings along with them. She stood in her shift and undershorts, struggling not to cry.

“Continue.”

She was torn by which end of her she did not want to expose first, but chose her shift first. She pulled it over her head and hair, loosening a few more hairpins as she did so. She dropped the shift, and being careful to hold his eyes with hers pulled down her undershorts as well. It was cold in the room, and she shivered slightly and without thinking wrapped her arms around herself. Before she could react, Martin was nearly on top of her pulling something she could not see from his belt. He grabbed her wrists and cuffed her with lightning speed. She looked down at her cuffed wrists in wonder – they had ratcheted neatly on before she had realized what they were. She looked up only to get another pop to the face, and she staggered back. She looked up at him, unhurt but terrified. He reached for her wrists, and lifted them over her head. She had not noticed the large hook that had been hanging just over her head. He looped her cuffed wrists over the hook and lowered the hook just enough to keep her feet flat on the floor, and then walked away - his boots echoing hollowly over the polished concrete. The light was in her eyes, and she could not see where he was. She heard the pop and hum of a switch being thrown, and was forced to close her eyes against the sudden flood of unbearably bright light.

She heard him coming back, his steps slow and deliberate.

Martin watched her swaying slightly as she tried to gain some sense of balance from her position. He walked up to her, bringing his body close to hers and looked down into her face. She kept his eye, and he began.

He started with her scalp, running his fingers through her hair, freeing it fully from its many pins and ties, and stretched her head back as he lightly tugged on her hair. He trailed his fingers behind her ears and then brought his hands to her throat. He rested his thumbs in the hollows on either side of her windpipe, wanting more than anything to squeeze down hard into the racing pulse he felt there even through his gloves. He ran his hands down over her shoulders, and lightly down her arms. He knelt, dropping to one knee and breaking his eye contact. He ran his hands over the shallow curve of her hips, his face close enough to her belly that he could see his breath stirring the blond-red hairs under her navel. He kept his breathing slow and deliberate, allowing his breath to continue on her skin. The smooth plane of her belly was goose-pimpled and she was shivering and he was beginning to see - _and smell_ that perhaps it wasn’t entirely from the cold. The sweat of her body had taken on a deeper tinge, an earthy undertone that triggered a pleasant tense coiling deep inside of him.

He smiled to himself, and ran his hands down the outsides of her legs and then back up the insides cupping his hands in the junction of her thigh and hip. Her hair in front of him was slightly curled, a bit darker than the hair on her head. He allowed the backs of his hands to barely brush it as he trailed his hands up and then came back to standing with his hands on her waist. Her breasts were fuller than he had imagined – they were not large, but they were well-rounded, the bottoms hanging just enough to form damn-near perfect teardrops. He looked up again, pleased that she had remembered to keep his gaze. He ran his hands up her flanks – over her ribs and just under her breasts. His hands slid around to the sides cupping her armpits, leaving just his thumbs resting lightly under her small pink nipples. She was trembling under his hands, and he moved his thumbs up circling her nipples in wide arcs until he heard her catch her breath. He closed the circles, and began slowly rubbing the rough pads of his gloved thumbs back and forth over her nipples, back and forth and back and forth and then began massaging them more deeply in tight circles. A sound formed in the back of her throat and when he saw the change in her eyes that he wanted to see he dropped his hands and stepped away from her.

He stood back, his hand on his chin watching her as she shivered. He turned and walked away – back up to the observation room and one by one, threw the switches back down leaving only the ambient light of the dim overheads. He walked back down to the floor, took her wrists down from the hook and uncuffed her.

“Get dressed.”

She seemed confused, dazed as she pulled her clothes back on. When she was dressed, he escorted her first to the small washroom in the corner of the Archive office, allowing her time to herself to wash up and whatever else she may need to do. When she was done, he took her back to the holding cell and left her there without another word. He had returned to his desk, where apparently he fell fast asleep without any memory of doing so.

**************

Martin finished the report, and checked it for errors and of course for anything that may be contradictory. His amended report included the mention of having dreams that hinted at heresy, and included that a further and more thorough examination would be necessary. He had been tired, but his memories of the night before had fired him back up into a near-rabid wakefulness as he re-wrote the report. He delivered the report back to Brother Lambert with an obsequious compliance, thinking that if, _when_ , he had the opportunity – this choffer’s head would be the first to bounce at his feet.

The rest of his day passed without incident, and when the paperwork reached a reasonable level of completion he headed out to find something to eat. He bypassed the mess hall and kept walking, out into the streets of Dunwall. He was ravenous, hungrier than he had been in a long time. After eating, he would head to his apartment in the Old Port District and review his notes for the ritual, and perhaps sleep some. There was much left to do, and he intended to be well-fed and rested when he did it.


	5. Day 3

Martin woke from a deep sleep, slightly hung over but better rested than he had been in some time. He stretched, kicking the sheets from where they had twisted between his legs the night before. It was early, and he had some time before he needed to head to the High Overseer’s Office. He lay with his hands behind his head, remembering the details of the dream he had the night before. He had been back on the Vigilant – not an uncommon dream for him as it had been the ship on which he had been stationed the longest in his spotty military career. When your four walls are a wooden cube for months on end, well – it tends to stick in the memory like a burr for years on end. In the dream, there had been bars on the small cabin – more of a nook, really that had been his bunk area belowdecks and he recalled seeing a man through the bars, a man whose face eluded him. The man’s features had been bland and clearly easy to forget, but there was something about his demeanor – seemingly friendly, but at the same time deeply unsettling and menacing. The man was speaking to him, but Martin couldn’t understand what he was saying – he was speaking in a language that Martin had never heard, and then suddenly a storm tore the ship apart and… he woke up. He shook his head, trying to loosen the last of his hangover from his brain. He had spent hours last night drinking that rotgut hard proof liquor and poring over the book, memorizing the passages and tracing the diagram in his mind until he could see it etched from behind his eyes when he closed them. He had no doubt that the hard study he had been doing had conjured up this … man in his dream last night.

He went to the washroom and splashed water on his face. It didn’t take more than a cursory glance to see that he needed to do quite a bit more than that. He bathed proper, and shaved after – the razor put to the test by the thickness of his beard growth. He was surprised that no one had mentioned it by now, but he was one of those men for whom the five-o-clock shadow tended to be a starting point of his day and not the end. No matter. He pulled a fresh shirt from his wardrobe and decided that this would be as good a week as any to get his uniform cleaned. It wasn’t particularly filthy, but it didn’t take long to go from ‘acceptable’ to ‘a written reminder from the Secretary of the High Overseer’ about care and cleaning of the Overseer uniform. He took a stiff brush to his gloves, rubbing the oiled nap this way and that softening the palms and fingertips. He certainly didn’t want to _chafe_ dear Rose this evening. He smiled to himself, thinking of the plan he had for her tonight.

Martin walked out into the deserted street. His apartment building was conveniently blockaded from foot traffic, and he made sure this time to have his damned mask on as he headed over to the High Overseer’s Office. Time to get the day started.

Martin’s first stop of the morning was at the holding cell where Rose was being homed for the time being. She stood when she saw him, her hands on the bars and her eyes meeting his when he pulled off his mask. “Good morning, Rose. I trust you slept well?” She nodded and said ‘yes sir’ though her eyes did not convey as such. There were small dark half-moons forming under her eyes, and she looked pale and tired. “Give me your hands.” Rose held her hands out palms without hesitation through the bars and he took her hands in his and pretended to be looking for something specific in the lines of her palms and fingertips, tracing them with the fingertips of his glove. “I will check your hands each morning, and I fully expect that you will not have done anything with them in the night that would affect the examinations.” Rose didn’t seem to understand what he meant – a small furrow appeared at her brow, but she nodded with a ‘yes sir’ as she knew she was meant to do. She may not understand now, but he knew that perhaps tonight after he was finished with her that she would. If not then, the next night. He would not allow her to sabotage this ritual with the things that she certainly would think of doing to herself very soon. May as well plant the seed of fear now. He gripped her hands in his firmly, and leaned in close to her, dropping his voice to a low honeyed register - the same tone of voice that had opened many beautiful legs for him over the years - and smiled gently. “If I find that you have, and trust me _I will know_ – you will never know greater regret than that which I promise you I will make you feel. Is that clear?” Her eyes widened, and he let her hands go abruptly as if they had been covered with poisonous spiders. She pulled her hands back through the bars, and he felt her eyes on his back when he turned and walked back to his office.

There was not nearly the amount of paperwork waiting for him that he had been expecting. Even Brother Juibal was lighthearted today, a step or two above his usually neurotic and somewhat melancholic demeanor. The two of them worked steadily through the morning until they each decided to break for lunch. Brother Juibal headed to the mess hall, as was his usual destination for meals and Martin headed out into the streets. He was looking for something specific, and without too much trouble found it. There was a produce stand not far from the office, and sometimes they had a good selection – though most of the time they did not. With the Fugue Feast coming up, he was certain that the selection would be bordering on exotic (for Dunwall, anyway) and he was not mistaken. He picked up a small container of strawberries, usually very rare for Dunwall and a few other things: a bunch of Serkonan grapes, a Morley apple or two and a small half-loaf of dark bread. These items he had carefully bagged, and then took them back to the High Overseer’s Office.

Once he got into the quiet office, he put together a small assorted plate of cut fruit and bread and took them to the holding cell. Rose had been sitting on the bunk, staring out at nothing – her mess tray untouched from where it had been slid under the cell door. She stood, her eyes glancing quickly at the untouched tray and Martin could see fear flickering in her eyes. The girl thought she was going to be in trouble evidently for wasting food, and she bent to pick up the tray, careful to hold Martin’s eyes as she did so. Martin unlocked the cell using a heavy key from the large brass ring attached to his belt. Without a word, he took her tray of dingy fare from her and handed her the plate of fruit and bread. Her eyes went wide, and her lip trembled. ‘Thank you, sir’. Martin gave but a small nod in return and then locked her back in. She was going to need all the energy she could get over the next few days, and from what he read in the ritual – what he had given her and would continue to give her to eat over the next few days was about as close as he was going to get to the fare outlined in the ritual in regards to prepping the vessel.

Martin finished out the rest of his day with ease. There had been a few more budget proposals to review, but he found himself able to complete the reviews quickly and with his usual thoroughness. He had gotten used to the deluge of budget proposals at the end of every year. It seemed that budgets took on the greatest importance and urgency only in the remaining dwindling hours in which to prepare for them for review. There were a few minor complaints that needed to be recorded and filed, and after that – the rest of the afternoon belonged to him. And Rose, of course.

He tidied his desk, and bade Brother Juibal a good evening. Brother Juibal was in high spirits, having also finished his stack of paperwork for the day and was excited about having some extra time with which to spend with his wolfhound Ren. He had worked out some training that he wished to do, and though he would never admit it – Martin knew that he was fond of the beast, and against general odds – the beast fond of him as well. When Brother Juibal had headed out toward the kennels, Martin took a moment to sit at his desk and mentally prepare for the rest of the evening.

The ritual had been just as clear about his part in it as it had been Rose’s. He could not, under any circumstances allow himself to give in before the proper time. This was no ordinary circumstance for him, no ordinary seduction. He probably would not have given this girl a second glance otherwise. She was attractive enough, but the temptation didn’t lie in her appearance or demeanor. There was something about her, her reactions to him – something that was hidden behind her eyes that pulled from him a thread of brutality that had been long dormant. He hadn’t beaten or hurt someone for pure pleasure in a long time, but something in her called out to that part of him. He could vividly imagine forcing open her legs and tearing her open with a single thrust, not for the pleasure it would bring him – so much as the pain it would bring her. He wanted to see his fingerprints left in her skin, like crushing petals from a pristine lily just to see it bruise and turn brown weeping its scent from torn petals. Yes, he would have to temper himself. The time for blood and pain would come, and she would welcome it – beg for it, in fact. He’d see to that. He shivered lightly thinking of that moment, and the moment promised to come after – the door would open, and the Outsider would be there waiting.

He cleared his mind, breathing deep – reciting the strictures over and over in his head, a habit of his that never failed to clarify his thinking and render his senses sharp. It was time. He flagged down a courier walking out of the High Overseer’s office and sent him with a message to send an Overseer to bring the girl down to the interrogation room, and make ready for the second part of his examination of her.

**************

When Martin walked into the floor level of the interrogation room, the girl sat fettered in tightly, and the Overseer stood in the shadows behind her awaiting orders. Martin asked the Overseer to lay the chair back and lift the leg rests. The girl’s arms were to be affixed above her head, and her leg fetters tightened to keep her legs slightly open. This sort of examination was typical for witches, and would work well for Martin’s purposes as well. He did not order her to be undressed, which was also typical for the second part of an examination – any visible marks would have been found in the previous exam. The second exam was purely about subjecting the detainee with increasingly varied and unbearably painful stimuli until a reaction was forced which would identify the subject clearly as a witch. No need to remove clothing for that. There was no need to remove clothing for the reactions he planned to pull out of Rose, either.

When the girl was in the position that he wanted her, Martin walked out of the interrogation room with the Overseer, explaining quietly to him that it was his opinion from his examination so far that this girl was not in fact a witch and thusly harmless. He would put her through the same rigorous testing as usual per protocol and then determine his next steps. The Overseer nodded, knowing well and admiring Overseer Martin’s reputation for thorough work, and excellent results. Martin dismissed the Overseer and the Overseer, pleased to have the rest of his night freed up made his way out into the night. Martin stepped into the interrogation room locking the door behind him, his insides tensing and coiling in anticipation.

Martin had made sure that the shiny chrome tray of sterile gruesome instruments had been placed where Rose could see them, close enough to smell the astringent sting of the surgical spirit that had not had time to dry on the various instruments. Beside the tray on the table were a pile of rags, and several unmarked vials of various fluids. On the floor, an old stained bloodbucket. Martin had no use for any of this, but the mere sight of it set the stage well. The girl lay out flat in the chair, her tightly fastened arms pulled above her head and her face was a mask of naked terror.

Martin approached the girl, who had the sense even in her terror to keep her eyes to his. Martin explained the second examination to her, holding up the various instruments for her to see while he talked – telling her only enough about each to assure that her mind would fill in the terrible details.

“By this time in the interrogation, if I have not found a mark on a witch’s person – and I did not see one on you, Rose – I have to perform a more _thorough_ exam to measure reactions to different stimuli. It is fascinating what reactions can be forced from a witch under the right circumstances, child. With one instrument, I can force her skin to change color. With another, I can make her quiver until she leaks swampwater and mud along with her blood. And so on.”

Rose gaped at him, her eyes filled with horror. Her breathing was shallow and he could see her tensing up from the effort not to lose control and struggle. Or scream. She did not speak. Martin knew at this point, she probably couldn’t. He went upstairs to the observation room, and grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and then threw the switches that pinned Rose squarely in the crossbeams of the spotlights.

Martin pulled the small folding chair close to where Rose was bound to the reclined chair. He sat and then touched the tip of his tongue to the point of the pen – readying himself to take notes. He was not unaware that his activities would have to recorded for this part of the examination, and decided to proceed in the usual way with this sort of interview. There were a variety of factors that could contribute to accusations of being a witch, many of which would be helpful to know for his own needs as well.

He cleared his throat and began the checklist of questions that he had long ago committed to memory, jotting her answers as she gave them:

“State your age for the record.”

Rose looked confused, clearly not expecting this sort of interview. She said that she was not sure of her date of birth but that she was certain that she had passed at least seventeen years of age.

“When was your first blood?”

She stated that she had been having her moon time for at least four years.

“Are your moon times regular?”

She answered that they were.

“Approximately when was your last blood?”

Around two weeks ago, sir.

“Do you suffer excessive cramp, melancholia or fits of anger in regards to your moon time?”

She was quiet for a moment, and said that she did not have any of these that were not ordinary to have during those times.

“Have you ever been pregnant?”

The girl blushed, said that she had not.

“Have you ever been treated for diseases, disorders or parasites pertaining to sexual activity?”

The girl said that she had not.

“How many sexual partners have you had?”

None.

“Have you experienced a climax – either by your own hand, or other devices?”

She looked confused, unsure of what he meant. She admitted that she did not know what that was, and whether she may have done so without realizing? Martin assured her that she would know what it was, had she experienced it. He moved on to the next question.

“Are your bodily habits regular?”

The girl was embarrassed by even the idea of this question, and her answer was a small ‘yes’.

“Do you have pain or difficulty upon the evacuation of your bodily wastes?”

The girl’s discomfort deepened, and she denied having either.

The questions continued on in that manner for a short time, and then Martin finished up his notes – summarizing a few things here and there. He stood and walked to the table with the shiny tray of instruments, picking up one by its knurled handle and letting the bright spotlights wink off of its curves and edges. Rose looked up at him, the glazed-over look in her eyes from the clinical questions again sharpening into fear. He leaned over her, holding the device just outside of her peripheral vision, and flipped a switch on the device with a loud click and he felt her entire body jump. He arched an eyebrow and held the device in front of her eyes to see more clearly – it was a small, but bright, flashlight. She relaxed some as he held open her eyelids, looking first in one eye and then the other. He moved to her ears, then her nostrils and then to her throat. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, and stopped to write a short summary of his findings.

When he was done, he laid the notebook down on his chair and took off his gloves. Rose watched him as he tipped a bit of the astringent surgical spirits on his palm and rubbed his hands together.

She began to tremble as he approached her, and when his hands touched her – her breath picked up some, becoming more rapid. He ran his hands lightly over her body, starting at her throat. He kneaded the sides of her throat and the undersides of her jaw and then moved down edging his fingertips along the bottoms of her collarbone, and then prodded his way down into her armpits. She squirmed a little under his touch, and he couldn’t help it when a faint smile touched the corners of his mouth thinking about her being ticklish. He moved his way down, prodding her groin and then finally down to her feet.

Martin explained that the physical exam was complete, and that they would move on next to the stimuli tests. The girl looked dismayed, her eyes darting away from his only long enough to glance toward the tray of terrible instruments spiked with various painful-looking knobs and hooks. Martin turned, his back to her and made a show of moving around the instruments looking for just the right one. He could hear her breath going shallow, and could smell the fear rising in her blood and leaking out with her sweat. He smiled to himself, and then turned to her holding up his empty palms. Her relief was palpable. He was looking forward to riding her this way for some time this evening, sending her up terrifying blind paths only to lead her out relieved. He enjoyed her terror, and her relief was ever sweeter knowing how short-lived it would be.

His first touch was gentle. He traced the contours of the bones of her face with a single finger-tip, his touch lighting across her skin like feathers. His face was close to hers, closer than it had been thus far and she held his gaze deeply. He touched her bottom lip, rubbing it so slightly – barely a touch, before dipping his fingertip into her mouth catching a fleeting brush with the tip of her tongue. He continued over her face and moved to the cups of her ears, brushing lightly and aiming his breath into them – gently, softly.

He traced down her neck, watching as a blush crept into her skin under his touch. With both hands - just his fingertips, he trailed down her chest stopping where her shirt was buttoned. He brushed his hands down the front of her shirt, noting the nipples hardening as his fingertips moved down, over and around them. She began to shift and move under his touch, and he ran his fingers lower over her belly and then down her thighs. He caressed behind her knees and then down further, removing her shoes and her socks. He ran his nails lightly up the arches of her feet, and her toes curled in slightly.

Standing at her feet, he gripped her shins firmly and then began working his way back up, his grip tightening here and there – digging his fingers into the soft flesh of her calves and her thighs through the thin worn fabric of her breeches. He stopped just under her belly, his palms flat on her hipbones pressing down with more pressure. Her breathing deepened, and her legs parted ever so slightly – he doubted that she had realized she had done so but he took the opportunity to move his thumbs down pressing harder as he worked them into the juncture of her thigh and pelvis. He looked up to see her looking at him, her eyes wide and wet. He swept his thumbs in deep massaging circles inward until they reached the middle seam of her breeches and began an upward sweeping motion, alternating his thumbs as they worked their way firmly up the seam. He continued rubbing, deepening his pressure until he heard her breath catch and begin to go slightly ragged. He would shift the pressure slightly to the left and right of the seam, and her body began to respond – she would shift as far as her fetters allowed, moving to find his fingers again sighing softly when she shifted herself back under their direct pressure. He could smell her now, her arousal warm-damp and lightly musky.

He took his hands away and then walked back up to the side of the table watching as she twitched from the new sensations that burned through her. She had drawn her legs as tightly together as she could get them, not quite tight enough to reach. He smiled at the light struggle he saw as she sought some way to squeeze her thighs together to bring that sensation back.

He unbuttoned her shirt, leaving her shift in place and then loosened the laces of her breeches pulling them open slightly. He stood back for a moment, getting his bearings, calming his thoughts, and pulling himself into tight control. The smell of her was flooding his brain and fogging his thoughts.

Of all the many women he had taken – those both willing and those perhaps not as willing, he had never lost his control over them, nor his control over himself – he had doled out equal measures of pleasure and pain with a nearly clinical detachment for so long that he no longer had to focus to maintain control. Something about this one was different, though. He could feel something from her tugging at his insides, pulling him in to her – teasing his brain, and weakening his resolve. He took this as an excellent sign that the ritual, while intense – would be resoundingly successful. He stood watching her for a moment longer, and when he felt his control click back into place, he approached her again.

He traced one of her erect nipples through her shift, and her eyes closed as she sighed deeply. He jerked his hand away from her nipple and reached up with a lightning speed, tangling the hair on the back of her head in his fist and he roughly yanked her head back. His words were a throaty growl through clenched teeth "Look at me." Her eyes opened fully and met his, his face inches from hers. He cupped her other breast, squeezing it roughly before bringing his fingers together on her nipple in a deep hard pinch – she yelped a little from the pain, and when he deepened the pinch into a twist a small groan escaped from the back of her throat. He kept his breathing even and deep as he moved his hand down and into her breeches, lightly tugging at the hair there as he raked his fingers through it. He cupped the whole of her in his hand, pulling the sides of her lips together in a firm grip. He held her that way, moving his hand up and down purposefully avoiding direct contact with that one spot nestled in the top of the cleft. Her breath had taken on sound, a deep ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhh as he increased his pressure, pinching at her skin and squeezing it together. He suddenly relaxed his grip, and with a single finger parted her and began working small circles around the small hooded bump, and it slowly began to swell. She was soft and barely damp there – her skin like thin silk as he worked it around and over the small bump, coaxing it out. Her thighs had begun trembling in rhythmic bursts, and he dipped his middle finger down into the hot wet at her center, drawing up the moisture he found there easing the sliding of his fingers over and around the now fully exposed swollen nub. She began to pant, and Martin abruptly drew his hand away turning away from her to wipe his hands down with a clean towel. Her eyes were rolling wildly, and he watched her impassively as she slowly relaxed and her breathing returned to some semblance of normal.

He pretended to take some notes, taking his time. He looked up, and she lay quietly – her twitching had stopped and her eyes reflected both wonder and confusion. A smile crept to one side of his mouth as he stood and approached her again. It was time to add another level of stimuli.

He leaned over her, his mouth close enough to touch hers – he reached out the tip of his tongue, darting it over her lips until she strained to touch her mouth to his. When she did, he caught her bottom lip in his mouth, sucking it softly for a brief moment before nipping it hard with his teeth and then letting go. Her eyes went wide with shock, and he could taste a hint of her blood in his mouth. His hand found its way back into her breeches, and she craned her neck back in anticipation, moaning lightly. With two fingers this time, he worked either side of the small erect bump, easing the hood up and down the tiny length of it. He worked rough circles around it, and her thighs began trembling again and body began drawing itself up from the middle – every muscle in her body was tense and her breath hissed between clenched teeth. Every time her body met his rhythm, he would change and slow his own. He kept her on the edge – bringing her close, and then letting her recede. Her movements became more fluid and instinctive and when she began matching his circles with those of her own, grinding her hips against his rhythm, he pulled her shift roughly down and drew his tongue wetly over the soft skin of her breasts. He struggled to keep his jaws from clenching too hard as he sucked the soft skin of her breasts, drawing it into his mouth, leaving rapidly purpling marks in the wake of his mouth. He began to use his teeth, and her cries began to carry hints of pain, real pain - and he focused his concentration on bringing her hips back into rhythm.

She started bucking against his hand – now, now – he took her nipple in his mouth and bit down on it hard, and a small scream tore from her throat. He broke the rhythm then – determined that she would not crest, and dipped his fingers into her as far as he dared against the smooth taut barrier protecting her opening. He drew his fingers gently against it, pulling his fingers up and then back down again – the sounds becoming increasingly wetter with each pass up and then down again. He picked up his rhythm, leaning forward to suck her other nipple into his mouth and then again biting down hard, perhaps a bit harder. She cried out again, and the sounds his fingers made working her became much wetter. He focused his fingers around again in small circles, bringing them rapidly up and down the sides of the small nubbin. She began to meet his rhythm again, her breathing lowered to an almost animal grunting. He waited until he felt her tensing up from her middle again, her jaw clenched and her eyes struggling to stay open. He pulled his hand away mid-movement. Her breath sobbing out, and she trembled miserably at the edge of a precipice that he would not allow her to fall into. He looked into her eyes, and touched her lips with his wet fingers and eased them into her mouth. This time she sucked them hungrily, never once breaking eye contact with him. He pulled his fingers out of her mouth, trailing a thin thread of wetness from the tip of her tongue.

He stood and began straightening her clothes with a distant clinical precision, buttoning her shirt and re-lacing her breeches, and then putting her socks and shoes neatly back on. He left her there while he gathered and put away the instruments, and then went up to the observation room to finish his notes. After he had finished getting the room back in order, and throwing the spotlight switches back down he brought Rose back up to a sitting position and undid her fetters and fastenings. Her arms fell limply down into her lap, and her hair was matted to her face with sweat. Her lips were swollen, and he could see that the fire that had threatened to consume her not more than half an hour ago had died to embers. She would look up at him, trying to catch his eye but he did not look at her except for with the most cursory of glances.

He indicated for her to stand, and then walked her toward the small washroom in the Archive office. He stopped by his desk and grabbed a few woolen blankets from the trunk next to his desk, and gave her one of the clean rags from the interrogation room that he had put in his jacket pocket. In the washroom, he instructed her to remove her clothes, give them to him and bathe herself thoroughly.

When she started to undress, Martin jerked her by the wrist roughly and looked down at her.

“I expect you to remember my earlier warning and heed it well. If you do anything to interfere with this process, I will make you regret it. I think you know what I mean now. If I check your hands, and see any evidence that you have tried to manipulate my findings in any such a way, I will not hesitate to mutilate those hands _and anything you touched with them_ beyond any ability to use them ever again. Do I make myself clear?”

Rose shrank from him, her fear washing away whatever residual fire had remained in her blood. He watched as she gingerly washed herself – careful to not linger in any areas for more than necessary. Wrapped in the layers of blankets, she walked quietly beside Martin back to her holding cell. He let her in, and said that he would return her clothing within the next day, and left her there locked up in the dark without another word.

**************

Martin sat at his desk, finishing the last touches of the report. It was not as late as he thought it would be but he was tired. He would finish up, and then head back to his apartment. He had considered washing Rose’s worn clothing, but decided to just pick her up some new clothes on his way back to the office in the morning. He was pleased with the progress he was making. With another day or so of hard training, she would be unable to feel pleasure without pain – unwilling to, even. By the time the Fugue Feast was upon them, she would demand the pain along with the pleasure and for the first time, he found himself looking forward to it beyond just the means to the end.


	6. Day 4

When Martin unlocked Rose’s cell and handed her the neatly folded stack of clothes and new shoes, her reaction was not what he had been expecting. She took the clothes with a polite nod and an attempt at a smile. She thanked him meekly, and then laid the stack of clothes on the bed. He had picked her up two sets of clothing that he thought she may like: a set that included a short dark green jacket and cropped slim-fitting black breeches, and another that included a black jacket that was slightly longer, with dark brown full-length trouser-style pants. The material was sturdy and comfortable and the styles were showing hints of the popularity that Empress Jessamine would later bring to them. The boots were low-heeled, high and black, and of a decent make and material. He did not forget stockings or underclothing. He wasn’t sure why he had been compelled to gift her with these things so close to the ritual, as if she were a lover. It was not likely she would survive the process, but for some reason it pleased him to buy these things for her. He had not expected any gratitude or excitement, nor was he looking for it. He had been looking for signs of her bonding to him which should have been evident by now. As it was this morning, she was still distant and polite – her reactions to him still purely compelled and reactive. Martin nodded politely, and dismissed himself from the holding cell area. He considered that he clearly had made an error in his translation and interpretation of the process.

Martin sat at his desk and pulled off his mask, running his hands over his face and up through his hair and took a moment to think before diving into the relatively small stack of paperwork in his inbox.

There had been a particularly difficult to translate passage in regards to the process of the bonding. The passage had included a word that described the bonding of the vessel with the conjurer that Martin had some difficulty finding a modern equivalent for. The closest cognate he could find in Isles Common had been ‘devour’, but when used in a particular context could mean ‘absorb’. Transcribed literally it was ‘the vessel must take into itself the essence compelled forth by the conjurer’. He had done so, pleased with Rose’s eagerness to suck the essence of herself from his fingers. He thought that this would have been the trigger for the bonding, but her behavior this morning suggested that it had either not worked – or Martin had mistranslated. There had been another less likely cognate that leaned more toward ‘exchange’ - exchange to a specific degree in fact – the context was related directly to consumption, and Martin wondered if perhaps the bonding was meant to be triggered via the _direct_ exchange of the essence of _between the both of them._ There was only one thing it could mean in that case, and Martin was not particularly excited to consider that. It would require a giving of himself in a way that he cared not to. Forcing Rose to bond to him was one thing, allowing the bonding to be mutual was quite another. Martin was a man who spent the majority of his life escaping and avoiding bonds, not forging them. The physical aspect of what he suspected was required made him uncomfortable as well.

He had partaken of mouthfucking in his time, but hadn’t much enjoyed it. The taste, the smell – the very subservient nature of pleasuring someone for only that purpose did not appeal to him. There was in these intimate activities a level of giving of himself – a vulnerability - that lay outside the bounds of what he found pleasurable or within his general range of comfort. His interactions had always been at best clinical, a game of tipping the scales from pleasure to pain at will – a game in which he was the facilitator rather than a participant. He had avoided this possibility in the ritual to no avail and it was too late to stop now. His goal was to call the Outsider to heel, and he would not allow his discomfort to sabotage that.

Martin knew that he had exhausted what use he could of the interrogation room, and would need to continue the preparations from his apartment. He wrote up the summary of his report on Rose in which he reported that he found no evidence of Rose Everleigh’s involvement in activities leaning toward heresy. It had, in fact – been her _mother_ who had been in congress with the Outsider, and had forced the girl to cover for her in an effort to avoid punishment and continue her activities. His recommendation to the High Overseer was immediate incarceration and interrogation of the girl’s mother. Given the sensitive nature of the case, Rose Everleigh must be released and remanded to the custody of Overseer Teague Martin for further observation to measure any residual effects that the girl may be suffering. Martin finished up the report, and wrote up the arrest orders for Keziah Everleigh to include with the report. When the report was finished, he took it to the High Overseer’s office and again was waved off to get the approval from Campbell’s secretary. After a thorough glance at the proper wording and formatting of the report, Brother Lambert said ‘very good, Brother Martin’ and stamped the paperwork accordingly. Rose now officially belonged to Martin.

The rest of the day went by painfully slow as Martin made his way through his stack of various forms and reports. There was yet another level of arduous paperwork to complete in regards to the upcoming meeting between Hiram Burrows, Empress Jessamine and High Overseer Campbell. The red tape flowed abundantly in the higher echelons.

Mid-day, Martin prepared another tray of fruit and bread for Rose and took it to her cell – again replacing the tray of dry fare that sat untouched under her cell door. The girl smiled a little this time, and Martin thought perhaps he had caught a blush. She was wearing the clothing he gave her, and while the clothes looked sharp – even with the washing she had done the previous evening, she still looked decidedly matted and grubby. He would take care of that when they got back to the apartment. He turned and left, deciding to hunt down some fare for himself and stop by the apothecary to pick up supplies that he thought best for the care and cleaning of Rose. He forgot to put on his mask, but thought nothing of it. He often forgot to wear it. Another day wouldn’t hurt.

On the way back to the High Overseer’s office, Martin saw a vendor standing on a corner on Clavering Blvd. selling flowers. It wasn’t the flowers that drew him in so much as it was the man selling them. This man looked familiar to Martin – had he known him … before? No, it wasn’t that. There was something about him though that compelled Martin to approach him. The man smiled blandly, and asked if here were searching for a rose perhaps? He swept out his hand to show the array of flowers available. Martin had never seen such flowers. The Fugue Feast brought vendors from all over the Isles, and this man looked to have come from far away. His style of dress and accent were not anything Martin could place. Perhaps he was from the north of Gristol where the ‘Wilds folk still spoke their ancient language? He agreed to buy a flower and before he could pick out one, the man said that he had just the thing – and handed him a bunch of roses wrapped in layers of old damp broadsheets. The roses were unusual – they were black, with perhaps a touch of violet and the petals were thick and somehow damply unpleasant to the touch. Something about them though… He paid the vendor, and went about his way back to the High Overseer’s office.

There was not much to do by way of paperwork for the rest of the afternoon, and Martin decided to take the rest of the afternoon to get Rose adjusted in his apartment. He had considered that he may need to ‘borrow’ some shackles and chain, but if the bonding part of the ritual worked this evening the way it should, he would not need shackles or chains. He decided to grab some anyway – some of the thinner-gauge ones with the shinier silver chain. Yes, those would do nicely. While he was in the supply closet, he made a note to pick up the evidence file on Rose and bring that along with him. An hour later, Martin was ready to go. He had everything he needed from the supply closet and had retrieved Rose’s file. He grabbed the rest of the fruit and bread, and the flowers and then went over to the small holding cell to fetch Rose.

Rose stood when he approached, and waited for him to speak.

“Rose, it’s your lucky day. I’ve just now received your discharge paperwork.” Martin waited a moment, watching her face begin to light up. He smiled thinly and continued. “I was not able to secure your freedom entirely, however. You have been remanded to my custody for further observation until the Fugue Feast, upon which you will be free to go.” Her face did not fall as much as he would have expected, but he enjoyed watching the slight wilting of her happiness as it began to sink in that she would not really be freed at all. She asked if she were going to be held in another cell, clearly afraid of his answer. There was only one place to go after interrogations, and that was either into the ground with a shovel of lime, or off to Coldridge. Martin said nothing for a few minutes, and slipped on his mask, his voice taking on the chill typical of masked Overseers. “You will be coming home with me.”

Martin put the packages down, and asked Rose to hold out her hands and then closed the thin shackles firmly on her wrists. She looked disheartened at being shackled in public, but was compliant. He did not think this was necessary for security or escape, but there was something thrilling to him about the idea of her at his side in chains. His mind touched on many things he would like to do to her in chains, in fact. He looped her chain to his belt with a small locking spring-clip and grabbed the various packages. The chain was just long enough for her to walk a half-step behind him, and she did so without question.

As they were walking up Clavering, Martin saw the flower merchant at his stand bow his head slightly and smile cryptically at him. Martin didn’t think much of it until a few blocks later. He hadn’t been wearing his mask when he bought the flowers! How on earth would the merchant known it was him? The flowers weren’t readily visible, but he figured the man must have seen them. Rose didn’t seem to have noticed him, but then again she was keeping her eyes to the ground.

The walk back was quiet. Rose didn’t talk on the way back, and Martin was glad for that. They walked to the Old Port District with little incident. People stared at them along the way, looking in horrified wonder at the well-dressed young woman chained to an Overseer. Martin knew well that they thought they were looking at a living dead girl – undoubtedly on the way to being tortured to death. He wondered if Rose was thinking the same.

Martin unlocked the main door of his building and walked Rose up to his apartment. It was quiet in the building, and the setting sun was casting long shadows on the landings as they walked the flights of stairs up to his apartment. When they got in, Martin took off his mask and put down the packages except for the one from the apothecary. He instructed Rose to sit quietly in his old chair, and he went into the washroom in his bedroom to draw a hot bath, pouring in the fragrant rosemary bath salts and arranging the bottles of Lady Triss Hair Soap, and the accompanying hair oil around the edge of the large shower-bath tub. With what he must do this evening, he wanted Rose to be clean and ready.

Martin took off his uniform jacket, promising himself that he would remember to have it sent to be cleaned within the next day or so. He loosened his shirt, and went into the common room to ready Rose for her bath. Rose was sitting quietly, looking around at the apartment. She looked apprehensive, and perhaps a bit ill at ease. She looked up at Martin, and asked if she may use the washroom and Martin unlocked her shackles and showed her where it was. He left her to her privacy, closing the door to the washroom and went to the kitchenette and rummaged for a bottle of Flin. Flin was a rare find in Dunwall, but Martin had a connection in Baleton that provided a relatively steady supply. He poured a dram in a small sturdy glass, and shot it down. It bloomed in a warm burst in his belly, sending a pleasant fire through his veins.

He heard Rose stepping out of the washroom and returned to the bedroom. Without a word, he began to undress her and while nervous, did not seem as afraid as she had been thus far. He unbuttoned her shirt, and pulled it away from her sliding it down her arms and letting it fall behind her. She stood still as he knelt to one knee to unfasten her trousers and slid them down, holding them as she stepped out of them. He instructed her to sit on the edge of the bed, and a blush crept slowly up her chest. Martin removed her boots and stockings, and then took her hands to pull her to her feet. She stood shivering in front of him – so close to him that she had to look nearly straight up to keep her eyes to his. He stepped back, and asked her to remover her underclothing. She did with the same awkward show as before, trying to preserve any modesty that could be had when completely naked. In the warm light of the oil lamps in the bedroom, her skin took on a rosy appearance, and her many sharp angles were softened by the mellow glow. She was blushing furiously, and Martin motioned for her to join him in the bathroom.

He took her hand as she gingerly stepped into the hot fragrant water and she eased down until she was nearly submerged. A sigh escaped her as the hot water soothed and relaxed her. Martin knelt beside the bathtub with the intention of washing her from there, but decided that perhaps he would join her instead – it would be easier to get her as clean as he wanted if he were in there with her. He stood and began unbuttoning his shirt, and Rose watched him – her eyes growing larger as he removed his clothes.

Martin was tall and appeared a bit thin, but under his clothes he was all compact, well-defined muscle. He had quite a bit of body hair, his chest lightly furred leading down into a trail of hair down into his breeches. He loosed the laces of his breeches, and then pulled them down. Rose was alternatively looking at him and then down, clearly nervous. Martin could see that she had never seen a man unclothed before. He pulled down his undershorts, and then stepped into the bath behind Rose. He settled in, the rosemary soothing his senses. The hot water was exquisite – knots of aches he didn’t realize he had loosened and he felt relaxed in a way he had not in a while. The Flin was helping to relax him as well. Rose sat very still, unsure what – if anything, she was expected to do at this point. Martin took her by the shoulders and said into her ear that he was going to bathe her. He pulled her head back, guiding her carefully as to wet down her hair without sending bathwater up her nose. She sat back up, the many coils and snarls in her hair lengthening down her back. Her hair was longer than he had reckoned, but curls tended to bely length in women’s hair he had found.

He started with her hair, working the thick strawberry and rose-scented hair-soap into her hair down to her scalp. His firm massaging of her hair and head was sending shivers through her thin back. He washed and rinsed, and then again – as her hair had frankly been filthy. He worked a good amount of the hair-oil into her hair, pulling the thick rope of it through his hands. He tugged on it lightly, and pulled her head back to him and quietly told her to stand. Rose stood in the bath, the water beading off of her rapidly goose-pimpling skin. He turned her to face him, and he saw her eyes widen at the sight of his naked body – particularly below his waist. He supposed a cock _was_ a strange sight at first, and as quickly as she had looked down at him, she looked back up at him to keep her eyes to his.

He soaped up a washrag with the thick hair-soap and then methodically began working his way down her body, gently scrubbing her face and neck – behind her ears and back. He worked up her arms, and then down her chest. When he soaped her small breasts, he could feel her breathing pick up some. He soaped down her belly, crouching to skip down to her legs and feet. He was eye level with the wet curls plastered to to the skin between her legs, and from his kneeling position moved the soapy rag up and began washing her carefully. He worked the rag between her legs, gently parting her to wash from her front to her back. She seemed flustered, but parted her legs some to allow for him to continue. The washroom was thick with the pleasant smell of the strawberry-rose soap, and small clouds of steam hung in the air. He finished washing her, and then sat her down to rinse.

When she was rinsed, he soaped up the rag again, pulled her to her feet and then handed it to her. She seemed confused at first, afraid to touch him. She reached out hesitantly with the rag, and began soaping small circles on his chest, working her way up his neck and across his face. He bent slightly to allow for her to reach the top of his head, and she washed his hair. He had never had anyone wash his hair before, and the circles that her small fingers were making on his scalp sent waves of simple pleasure tingling through him. It was a comfortable sort of pleasure, far from the intense nearly painful sort that he had come accustomed to. He had experienced his fair share of women pulling at his hair in various stages of sexual congress. He stood, swiping the soap from his face with both hands and nodded for her to continue. She soaped down, avoiding the area from midsection to thigh – either embarrassed or afraid, he wasn’t sure. She worked her way back up his legs stopping at his thighs, her hand hesitating.

He took the washrag from her, and guided her soapy hands to his cock. Even with both hands, she was not able to span the length of him and stood holding him. He took her hands and tightened her grip around him, and then guided them down and then back up again. He did this a few more times until she was able to do so herself. The look of fear on her face had changed to something more like curiosity at the feel of himself in her hands. She ran her hands down again, this time with a firmer grip – and his tip popped out of its sheath of skin. She jumped slightly, clearly not expecting it and drew his skin back up over his tip with her hands. He guided her hands down further between his legs, and she ran her soapy hands gently around. He took her hands away, and then rinsed the soap from his body. She was looking up at him, shivering. The steam had settled, and the air was getting cooler in the washroom. He took her hand, helping her step out and then did so himself. It was almost time, and he was equal parts eager and apprehensive. He gave her a thick towel, and then toweled himself off as well. The bedroom was much cooler, but between the Flin and his anticipation Martin hardly noticed it. 

Once they were dry, Martin walked to Rose and she stumbled back a bit as he took her by the wrists and continued walking her backward until she was up against the wall. He pressed his body into hers, looking down into her eyes. His hands found her waist, and he moved them up to thumb her nipples at first gently, and then a little rougher as he felt his own breath quicken. Her mouth parted, and breathing deepened as he rubbed harder. He worked his way down to her hips and gripped her hipbones. He lowered himself slowly to one knee, tonguing and nipping at the skin on her chest – teasing his way toward her nipples, taking one and then the other into his mouth, sucking hard on them until she gasped. He moved his way down her belly, dipping his tongue into her naval and then continued down. He felt her stiffen, as it became clear what he was going to do. He nuzzled the fronts of her thighs, and ran his fingers through the damp curls between her legs – tugging them occasionally through caresses. He was there now – his face close to her, and there was the usual female smell but there was something else, something he hadn’t been close enough to notice before. It was less of a smell than it was a sensation that affected his senses. It was nothing he could identify or name, he only knew that it made him want to fuck her very, very badly.

He ran his tongue up her thigh, and then lightly kissed her curls. He did not much want to take her into his mouth, but knew that he would need only tip his tongue into her briefly to achieve what needed to be done. He parted her legs slightly until she opened up to him, and he tongued her lightly along the length of her slit. She was tense – afraid of this new thing, and her fear drew him deeper. With his thumbs, he opened her up and curled his tongue into her wetness. His senses were immediately flooded with unexpected sensations. Her taste, her smell – his mind filled with thoughts and memories of freshly-threshed hay and the clean sap of cut flowers, salt-air, still water, roses – the black roses. He had meant to stop here, but instead found himself driving his tongue in deeper, sucking her skin into his mouth. He took her with his mouth, licking every part of where she was exposed to him. He worked his jaw and tongue roughly on her, focusing on the small bud of her, sucking on it, exposing it from where it hid under the small hood of soft skin. He stroked it hard with his tongue, working circles and then sucking, working circles and then sucking. Her thighs began to tremble rhythmically, and he tilted her hips forward to drive his tongue into her again as far as it would go, taking care with the barrier there that he dare not breach – not yet. The taste of her filled him from the inside out. He grabbed her behind her knee, bringing first one leg over his shoulder and then the other. He continued sucking on her, and her gasps became deep and ragged. He felt her hands in his hair – hesitantly at first, and then she was grasping his head pulling him in deeper. When her hips began moving, he matched her movements as she ground herself into his mouth. Her thighs began shuddering and he forced himself to tear his mouth away and drop her legs quickly back onto the floor. No. NO. She was weak having been so close to cresting, and she wobbled on her feet. He stood pinning her against the wall, holding her steady and still until her breathing slowed – receding away from the edge. She had been dangerously close – and in one moment he could have ruined the ritual before its time. 

His cock was painfully hard, the first time he had ever been aroused from mouthfucking a woman. When her breathing steadied, he looked down between them. A pearly bead had formed at his fully-exposed tip. Now, he needed to get it in her mouth now. He put his hands on her shoulders, and firmly guided her to her knees. He grasped her under her chin, and with his thumb pulled down on her lip, moving his thumb in to press down on her teeth until her mouth was open wide. “Your tongue, Rose – stick out your tongue, now” and when she did, he tipped his hard cock down and rubbed the bead of moisture onto her tongue. She was looking up at him, and he felt her hands making their way up his thighs. She moved her head forward, and his tip slid along her tongue and deeper into her mouth. She closed her mouth over him, and in an inexperienced and slightly toothy movement, took him in as deep as he would go.

He gasped as her jaw slowly relaxed and her awkward tonguing became a smooth wet suction. She moved her hands up onto him, working the wetness of her mouth with her hands slickly up and down as her sucking went from hesitant and soft to a hard nearly unbearable suction at his tip. Martin grabbed her by the back of her head, tangling her hair in his hand and began guiding her head into his own rhythm. His breath hissed through his clenched jaw, and his lips curled back from his teeth - his sounds somewhere between grunting and growling as his breath shuddered in and out. He dropped all pretense of gentleness and with both hands grabbed her head and began fucking her deep down in her mouth, the tip of him at first butting the back of her throat and then slightly entering it. She was gagging and drooling, but she rallied quickly and began a near assault on his cock - her breath reaching its own series of small feminine growls.

Martin had never spent from mouthfucking before, but he felt the first jolts of electric feathers working up and down his legs and before they could reach any further up into his middle, he pulled her head away from him, and his cock sprang out of her mouth with a wet pop. He was trembling all over, seconds away from spending – he could not, would not. He willed his cresting to recede, and when the moment passed he pulled Rose to her feet. Her face was wet, his face was wet – he grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the wall and brought his mouth down to hers. He did not nip or bite, he merely melted his mouth into hers and tastes of them together flooded his mind. He drove his tongue into her mouth in a firm motion, only to be met with the same from hers. They tore into each other, sucking, savoring – their sounds more human than spoken words. They continued on like this, sliding around the curves and points of each other until a gentle fatigue set in and slowed into a soft swaying with her head on his chest, and his arms around her. The stood that way until the chill of the air sent them to their clothing. They got dressed quietly and afterward, Martin stepped out onto the small window balcony overlooking Dead Man’s alley. Rose stepped out to join him. He offered her a cigarette, and she accepted. He showed her how to smoke, and together they smoked and watched the night deepen further into darkness over Dunwall. 

**************

Late that night, somewhere in the violet hours before morning Martin woke to find Rose rolled in a small ball, her back curled into him. Without hesitating or even giving it any thought, he curled the length of himself around her and pulled her close into his warmth. The bonding was complete.


	7. Day 5

Martin awoke in the gray light of the early morning, at first startled to find a woman in his bed and then relaxing as the reality of the situation flooded warmly over him. Rose was his now. Truly his. Nonetheless, he was worried about leaving her at the apartment by herself while he was at work. He crept up out of bed quietly, quickly gathering the book and his notes and locking them in the bottom drawer of his desk. He wasn’t sure why he was hiding them – he could recite the whole book to her at this point and it wouldn’t really change anything but something compelled him to put these things away under lock and key anyway. The other heretical things he was not worried about her finding. She wasn’t likely to know what they were, or what their significance would be. He counted on this bonding working true to its intent. If all had gone well, she would simply follow his commands without question whether in his presence or not. He walked quickly around the apartment, looking for any other things that he would prefer her not to see but decided that perhaps it wasn’t necessary. In two days, and just a few hours it would all be over for her.

He crawled back in bed, and Rose rolled toward him in her sleep – reaching out for him and melting into the curves of his body. Her skin was warm, and the heady smell of her had dried and mellowed. He propped up on his elbow and nuzzled at the nape of her neck through her hair, and she stretched like a cat and woke. She turned over to face him with a dazed dreamy look on her face and smiled. She tilted her face up to his, darting her tongue out and over his lips. He felt a fire rushing throughout him from her touch and he was on her in an instant, roughly pulling her hands above her head and pinning her body with his own. She moved under him, parting her legs and then trapping one of his thighs between her own. She started a slow movement, stroking herself against him and Martin had to shift to stop her. He knew that if he allowed her to continue this, nothing would stop him from fucking her bloody. It wasn’t quite time for that - _yet._

He glared into her eyes and ordered her to stop moving. And she did. The dazed look in her eyes cleared, and she lay still while looking up at him. He would have to find a way to continue the hard training of her without succumbing to the urges that the bonding had planted within him. This bonding had rendered his mind flooded with a constant and persistent need to have his cock buried inside of her as deep as he could force it, in every possible hole he could manage to fuck of hers. He had never wanted to possess someone so badly. Nor had he ever wanted to bring as much pain. He wanted to hear her cry out, needed it. He needed it _now._

He let go of her hands, and raised himself to straddle her and ordered her to keep her hands above her head. She kept her eyes to him as he unbuttoned her shirt, opening it and began at first caressing, and then lightly pinching her nipples. He felt something surge inside of him, and he found himself pinching harder – twisting until her breath was coming in small squeaks and then cries. She arched her back into his assault, and he took the whole of her breasts in his hands and dug his fingers into them. Her nipples had gone an angry red, and he knew by nightfall that he would see bruises on her in the shape of his fingers.

He leaned over her, closing his eyes in pleasure at the sound of her quiet sobs before bringing his mouth to her chest to taste the welts he had left there. He sucked her skin into his mouth, biting into it until her sobs deepened to ragged groans. He could taste a hint of her blood in his mouth, and moved himself down her body. He pulled at the waist of her pants roughly, working them down her hips and stripping them off of her along with her undershorts. He took her knees and roughly opened them to each side, spreading her wide so that he could see nearly up into her. She was so wet. So very wet.

He felt his head swim at the sight of her, the smell. He ran a finger up through the thick wetness of her. She was already swollen, ready - and he saw that the bonding had clearly filled her with the same primal urge to fuck. He rubbed a fingertip along her parted lips, meandering in patterns that refused to cross her small swollen nub. She was moaning now, trying to move herself under his touch. He dragged his thumb up and his finger down, catching the shiny pink exposed nub squarely in his grip. His fingers were slippery, but he was able to stroke it like a tiny cock and marveled at how it swelled and lengthened under his stroking. He waited until her thighs began to tremble, and then pinched down hard on it.

She yelped and jumped as if shocked pulling her hands down from over her head and curling into herself. He popped her hard across the face with the back of his hand ordering her to put her hands back above her head. She did so, laying back and trembling, her legs jerking from the aftershocks of the pain. He reached back down to find that her wetness was even greater, and had begun to spread down the insides of her thighs in shiny swaths. He grabbed her by the hips and flipped her over, and pushed her head down hard into the mattress.

He pulled her up on her knees, positioning her ass as high as it would go while her head remained cheek down on the mattress. Her arms were bent at her sides, and she had handfuls of the blanket tightly in her grip. He pulled her knees further apart, fully opening her from cunt to ass. He rubbed her small firm cheeks, and then smacked her hard on the ass. Her breath caught in a gasp as the red imprint of his hand rose on her skin. He popped her again, and her legs began to tremble from the pain. He gripped her ass, and with his thumbs reached down catching the sides of her lips, and pulled her open. He could see into her; he could see the thick membrane there covering and protecting her opening.

He trembled thinking of how he would rip into it, the sounds she would make as it tore and bled. He dipped a thumb into her slightly catching the wetness there and rubbed it in small circles against the smaller puckered opening above. She struggled lightly to move away from his thumb, but her held her hips firm as he deepened the pressure. His thumb began to dip in, and then he drew it out and began working small circles again. He could not tell if she liked it or not, but didn’t care. He wanted to be inside of her in some way, _needed_ to – had to, and he wanted it to _hurt._ Her mouth was not enough.

He moved his hands up her back, and then grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the bed as he stood. He held her easily in his arms, and walked with her to the chair in the great room. He sat, and then sat her in his lap facing away from him. He pulled her backward by the hair until her head rested on his shoulder. Martin pulled her knees apart as far as he could get them and whispered in her ear “If you close your legs, even an inch - I will beat you senseless, and I promise you will not enjoy it. Do you understand, Rose?” She nodded, trembling.

He reached between her legs and began slowly stroking up and down, dipping his fingers in on the downstroke and rubbing increasingly harder circles into her nub on the upstroke. He did this until she struggled to keep her thighs open. He could feel the wetness of her dripping onto his cock and he moved her slightly up and positioned himself so that the very tip of him nestled between her cheeks, nudging against the tight dimple between them.

He ran his hands up her belly and chest, kneading her breasts deeply and bringing his fingers together at the tips of them in painful pinches and twists. Her body tensed in small spasms under his rough touch. He ran his hands down again, his fingers finding her nub again, working small circles around it. When her hips began to move, he pushed his hips upward slightly, working the tip of his cock slowly into her ass. She was slick with wet, and he was able to stretch her easily. He pulled her hips down and pushed up slightly harder until he felt himself beginning to enter her. It was so tight, nearly painfully so on his cock. 

She went stiff for a moment as he began to move his hips up and down in small movements to work himself in further. He pushed a little harder while pulling her down, and with a small pop the entire tip of him was inside of her. She froze in position, afraid to move and her legs were trembling. He reached down to feel that she was far wetter now, and he began to work her nub hard, roughly rubbing it up and down. He held her still, stretched tightly around the tip of his cock – and with his other hand, reached up and twisted her nipple hard while rubbing her nub harder. It was fully swollen now, a hard button in a nest of soft skin. She was jerking rhythmically, her legs splayed fully open. He stopped rubbing her and then brought his hand down in a hard wet pop right between her legs. Her legs jerked as if to close but she held them open, and he popped her hard again. He breathed a ragged whisper into her ear, “You are mine now, all this I touch is _mine._ ” Her groans were tipping toward growls and he began roughly working her nub again until her hips were bucking under him, her movements working his cock deeper into her ass. Her breathing quickened, and her legs began trembling rhythmically, and out of her clenched teeth groaned a guttural “Yours, yesss… yessss.. yesssss.”

He stopped abruptly, pulling his cock out of her ass and pushed her off of him and to her feet. She turned and looked at him with wild eyes, panting and trembling as she came down from the waves of sensation that had carried her right to the very edge. Martin smiled and stood in front of her, his cock bobbing as he too rode the crest back down. He had come close to spending, again – almost too close, but he had gotten inside of her. There was nothing in the ritual about that, thankfully and he was already considering the many ways he planned to continue doing so. It was getting harder to keep them both from spending, and was doubly so after this bonding but by the Void he would find a way to keep it going until it was time for the ritual.

He put his hand to her face, and drew her near, sucking at her lips and nipping them lightly. She reached up, encircling his neck and drew herself into his kiss. He pulled her hair back from her ear, suckling at her earlobe and breathing in the strawberry-rose scent of her fiery hair. He whispered into her ear that he had to go, and that while she was free to do what she liked in the apartment, she was not free to leave. He touched the tip of his tongue in her ear while he half-whispered to her. He reminded her in his lulling whisper that if he returned home and found any evidence whatsoever of her touching any parts of her body that belonged to him now, nothing would stop him from carving the meat of her fingers off to the bone and force-feeding her the scraps before he killed her. He sucked her earlobe into her mouth gently while caressing her bare back. She trembled as he gently traced the contour of her jaw, and ran his finger across her lips. He smiled down at her, and stepped away to begin his day.

**************

When Martin got to the Office of the High Overseer he could immediately see that something was wrong. Very wrong. Overseers patrolled the perimeter with their wolfhounds, heads high and alert in the chilly drizzled breeze of the morning. He could see light glinting off the masks from various nooks and corners watching out over Dunwall. There was a charge in the air, a near-electric thinness that seemed to seep in from places other than down from the heavy gray clouds piling up in the sky. He hurried his step, thankful that he had remembered to pull on his mask. There were none of the usual nods of greeting this morning, but the glances at him seemed to last longer than usual. Martin hoped it was his imagination. He ran quickly inside and was stopped in the front lobby by Brother Lambert, who evidently had been waiting there for him. There was none of the usual obsequious pretense, just a hurried efficiency. Brother Lambert told him that he was to immediately report to High Overseer Campbell. Martin’s heart began thumping hard, confused by the behavior of Lambert. If he had been caught in this ritual, he’d be in the stocks right now if not outright beheaded on the spot. He kept his usual icily polite demeanor, and walked quickly next to Lambert fighting the frantic urgency that would give away his guilt.

High Overseer Campbell turned to them as they walked into his office. His face was hard, but his eyes were tired. “Martin, finally. Come – we’ll talk in the interrogation room.” Martin was glad for his mask to hide the look that surely had come over his face. When they got to the interrogation room and walked in, Martin pulled his mask way from his face and gaped at the mess that he beheld. He had never seen anything like it. There was wide swaths of blood, still tacky, on the walls and bits and gobbets of shit and _meat?_ splattered and stuck to nearly every surface. Campbell stood with his arms crossed, and his brow furrowed saying nothing. Martin walked the perimeter of the room, and then up into the observation room. The violence of whatever had happened had flung viscera and filth even up into the very corners of this room. Martin stopped and gathered his thoughts, breathing deeply and evenly to bring his mind under control. The strictures, recite the strictures. When he had completed the set in his mind, he felt his thoughts clearing and any stray edges of panic receding.

He walked back down to the interrogation floor and he and Campbell stood for a moment looking around the room. It seemed oddly dim and when Martin looked up, he could see that something had been blasted up into the ceiling, taking out one of the large hooded lights.

Martin asked calmly “What happened here,” more of a statement than a question. Campbell turned to him, and said “Keziah Everleigh. That’s what happened.” Campbell went on to commend Martin on his shrewd methods of sussing out the true heretic, and told him that after the dust settled he and Martin would have much to talk about in terms of a greater role within the Abbey for Martin.

High Overseer Campbell briefly described how they had taken in Keziah Everleigh last night on Martin’s order of arrest. She had not struggled, nor shown the least bit of fear. She seemed _eager_ , in fact. The interrogation had started in the usual way, sometime around 10 o' clock in the evening and as the interrogation progressed her behavior had become increasingly erratic. Martin asked about what entailed ‘erratic’ and Campbell cleared his throat and said that her words had gone from defiant to graphically sexual. It was in the hours before dawn that this had happened. Martin looked around and asked what exactly had been done to her to cause this horrific explosion of human detritus. Campbell looked at him, his eyes narrowing and gestured around the room and said “Martin, this that you see around you. Of all of this you see, none of it is hers.” Martin was nonplussed but hid his expression well. “Do you mean to tell me that _this_ belongs to our Overseers?!” Campbell nodded grimly. He explained that he had barely made it out himself when it had happened. Martin asked for an explanation and Campbell said that he was hardly able to explain it, but there was a moment – a single instant in the pre-dawn hours in which she changed suddenly. She had been beaten thoroughly over the course of the evening, the various parts of her prodded and poked at length by the Overseers and later more intimately so by Campbell. There had been some observations made personally by Campbell that her body had responded physically to the pain of the torture in such a way that made it clear that she was enjoying it.

Martin waited for Campbell to clarify, but he did not. He went on to explain that they had finally worn her down, and she had become lethargic and unresponsive and then something had changed suddenly in her demeanor. She had begun _laughing_ through her broken teeth – a demoniacal laughing that had made the Overseers nervous. She had begun to speak in a language that had sounded like words mixed with the buzzing of insects and that air became heavy and dense. Then, her eyes had turned black and she changed into … something.

Campbell stopped to gather his thoughts, and then continued. She had started shifting from the inside, moving as if her bones were trying to escape. The Overseers had backed away from her then, and when her eyes turned black they had all retreated to the observation room to join Campbell and the attending physician Dr. Killjoy to safely watch the spectacle below. She … _it_ had pulled its hands and feet from the shackles with a boneless ease and stood continuing to shift and change. Several of the Overseers had begun to quietly recite the strictures to keep their composure. The thing below had taken on the form of something that looked like a woman, but also like something that Campbell did not have the words to describe. He said that he could see it in his head, but any attempt to put words to it failed him.

Martin did not speak, waiting for him to continue. Campbell said that one of the Overseers had taken a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin and threw it through the bars down into the interrogation room, where it hit the thing directly, exploding on contact. It had appeared to obliterate the thing and they had walked down into the room to investigate what was left. Campbell brought his hand to his face, rubbing the bridge of his nose and then under his eyes, and then continued. When they got down into the room, there had been a clear splatter pattern of what was left of her sprayed on nearly every surface of the room. As they were talking, they had not noticed the chunks and liquid remains of the thing slowly coalescing, returning to a central point like water down a drain. They had thought their eyes were playing tricks on them, and by the time they realized what was happening the thing had reappeared. The sound of it suddenly sucking the last of itself back together had been like nothing Campbell had ever heard, nor ever wanted to hear again.

The thing had struck suddenly, sending parts of itself out in rapid succession and each Overseer that this thing, this _tentacle_ of sorts, had touched had exploded as if having swallowed a live grenade. Campbell had not waited to see what would happen next. He, Dr. Killjoy, and the only other surviving Overseer had run, bolting the interrogation room door behind them. Campbell had triggered the emergency gas mechanism and a toxic caustic green miasma had filled the interrogation room from top to bottom. When they came back to check the room a few hours later, what they saw in front of them now was all that was left in the room. Campbell did not know what had happened to the thing. He had assumed that it had somehow been dissolved by the gas. He handed Martin a scrap of cloth that had been left on the interrogation chair – it was a bloody scrap of an Overseer jacket, the gold threads of the farming fork insignia unravelling at the edges. On it was written in blood something in a scratchy scrawl:

_ph' nglui ot gn'th'bthnk ng li Y' l' ephainog ymg'_

He asked if Martin would take the scrap and provide a translation and Martin said that he would. He recognized a couple of the words, his blood freezing in his veins at the eldritch words for ‘blood’ and ‘pain’. He folded the scrap and put it in his pocket. Campbell asked him what it had been in the daughter’s interrogation that had given the mother away, and Martin lied and said that it had been a simple matter of appealing to the girl’s need for protection and that she had freely told him about her mother’s involvement with the Outsider. Campbell thanked him for his contributions to the investigation and that had it not been for his outstanding work and instincts for sniffing out heresy, this thing would be walking the streets of Dunwall still, doing who knows what.

Campbell and Martin left the interrogation room. Campbell needed to get back to his office to have Brother Lambert requisition an expendable crew of men from Coldridge to act as cleanup detail. Martin asked if he could read the interrogation report and transcript, and when they got back to Campbell’s office Brother Lambert fetched the packet for him with no questions, merely nodding to him when handing it over.

Martin sat at his desk reading the report, the paperwork in his inbox going unnoticed. Brother Juibal was working on his paperwork, stealing glances over at Martin from time to time. He had not been present at the interrogation of Keziah Everleigh, but he had seen the aftermath and that was enough to render him quiet for the rest of the morning.

When Martin finished the report, he moved on to the interrogation notes. He read both again, his fury rising - and then with the packet under his arm pulled on his mask and left the High Overseer’s Office without a word. Rose had a lot of explaining to do, and Martin was very much looking forward to the various ways he would force her to do so.


	8. Interrogation Report and Finding of Keziah Mason Everleigh

_This log book is the property of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin and her Council._

_This Interrogation Log is invariably to be kept locked up when not in use and is not to be taken outside the Archives of the Abbey of the Everyman for which it is issued without the express permission of High Overseer Campbell._

_It is intended for the use of the Overseers of the Abbey generally, and may in certain cases be communicated to persons in Empress Jessamine’s Service below the rank of Overseer who may require to be acquainted with its contents in the course of their duties. The Overseers exercising this power will be held responsible that such information is imparted with due caution and reserve._

**OVERSEER DIVISION**

**SECRET**

**Accusation:** Heresy, First Degree with aggravating circumstances regarding the welfare of a child.

Division: Warfare Overseers  
Office: Office of the High Overseer  
Date: Day 26, The Month of Songs, 1830  
Supervisor: High Overseer Thaddeus Campbell  
Name of Interrogator: Overseer Franklin  
Assisting Interrogator(s): Overseers Mason, Sunderland, Townshend, Shepherd, Pendleton  
Attending Physician: Dr. Q. L. Killjoy, of the Carnate Asylum, Potterstead  
Interrogation Setting: Interrogation Room, Office of the High Overseer  


**Introductory Remarks:** On Day 25, The Month of Songs, 1830, Overseer Teague Martin of the Archival and Administrative division reported to High Overseer Campbell the findings of the interrogation of one Rose Everleigh. In these findings, Overseer Martin deduced that his detainee was not a heretic, but the pawn of a heretic – a child used by its mother to hide her own familiarity and congress with The Outsider. On recommendation of Overseer Martin, and by his arrest orders, the accused was apprehended in the Old Port District around 9 o' clock in the evening of Day 26, The Month of Songs, 1830. The accused is a reasonably attractive woman of 39 years of age, generally in good health, well-nourished with no reported history of disease or illness. Her hair is red-orange tending toward gray, and her eyes are green. The accused reported no previous injuries or scars about her person. She is 5 foot 6 inches tall, and weighs approximately 125 pounds. She is well dressed, clean, free of parasites and possesses all of her teeth and limbs. Strength is average, normal for a woman. No heretical marks were visible from the confines of her clothing.

 **Intake Information Validity Disclaimer:** The following is compiled from information and observations derived from an accused heretic. The statements made cannot always be verified; they should therefore not be accepted as facts unless they are definitely stated to be confirmed by information from other sources.

 **Intake information:** The following was arrested on this date, and brought in for interrogation at approximately 10 o’clock in the evening. The Person Named Below voluntarily gave the following information, after having been instructed to tell the truth:

1\. Regarding her personal data:  
1a. Family name including additional designations: maiden name, or if appropriate, names of previous husbands: Everleigh, nee’ Mason (no relation to Overseer Harold Mason)  
1b. Given name: Keziah Mason Everleigh  
2\. Occupation: Widowed pensioner  
2a. Income: Estate of Howard Phillips Everleigh, in perpetuity, since 1813  
3\. Born 1791, date unknown, The Month of Darkness  
4\. Residence: Dunwall, Old Port District  
5\. Citizenship: Dunwall  
6\. Religion: none, as stated  
7\. Children: One daughter, 17 years of age  


**The following is a transcript of the initial interview. No enhanced interrogation was used in the initial interview.**

Overseer Franklin: State for the record the truth or corrections as necessary in regards to the personal information collected.  


Keziah Everleigh: I attest the information given is true, to the best of my ability to provide as such.  


Overseer Franklin: Are you aware of the charges of heresy brought against you?  


Keziah Everleigh: I am. Yes.  


Overseer Franklin: You stand accused of congress with The Outsider. What say you in your defense?  


Keziah Everleigh: I have nothing to defend.  


Overseer Franklin: Are you attesting to your guilt in the matter of congress with The Outsider?  


Keziah Everleigh: I feel no guilt, none.  


Overseer Franklin: You have used your own child in an egregious manner to throw false accusation upon her to hide your activities and congress with the Outsider. This compounds the gravity of the accusations against you.  


Keziah Everleigh: Used her? I’ve done nothing but to prepare her for the purpose for which she was born. Her being brought here was no accident. Neither was mine.  


Overseer Franklin: Have you exposed your daughter to the heresy of which you stand accused?  


Keziah Everleigh: No.  


Overseer Franklin: Are you prepared to confess the extent of congress with the Outsider of which you stand accused?  


Keziah Everleigh: What would you like to hear first? Perhaps you’d like to know if his cock is indeed crooked?  


Overseer Franklin: Let it be known that impertinent behavior from this moment forward will not be tolerated.  


Keziah Everleigh: It isn’t.  


Overseer Franklin: What isn’t?  


Keziah Everleigh. His cock. I hereby confess that the Outsider’s cock is not crooked.  


**Observation notes – Initial Interrogation:** Overseer Franklin ended the initial phase of the interrogation here, and with the assistance of Overseers Mason, Sunderland, Townshend, Shepherd, Pendleton prepared the interrogation room for the physical exam portion of the interrogation, and lowered the chair into the strapping board position. Dr. Q. L. Killjoy attended, prepping and sterilizing the various equipment and materials necessary for the enhanced interrogation to follow the physical exam. Overseer Franklin cut away and discarded the clothing of the accused, shaved away the hair of the accused’s head, and began the external physical exam to search for heretical marks on the accused’s person. Finding no heretical markings, High Overseer Campbell performed an invasive examination, also reporting no evidence of markings or unusual protuberances within the bodily cavities of the accused.

 **Notes on Equipment and Devices:** The following devices were checked out from the inventory of High Artificer Bartholomew, and delivered by Overseer Humphrey: _devices used in the course of the enhanced interrogation: (see fig. 1-5, addendum 2, inventory report):_ ‘Burman’ Hair Clippers, Scarificator, Ecraseur, Scalpel, Fleam, Surgical Dioptra, Cautery, Dental Key, Granville Hammer, Studded Leather Straps, Blunted haft.

 **Observation Notes – Enhanced Interrogation:** The enhanced interrogation proceeded with little, if any resistance from the accused. Overseer Franklin initiated the first round of stimuli, with expected results. Dr. Killjoy reported elevated respiration, flushed skin and foul language. The stimulus was continued with no unusual effects noted. Overseer Franklin initiated the second round of stimuli, with expected results. Dr. Killjoy reported further elevated respiration and heart rate, flushed skin, swelling of genitals, production of normal female fluids, and foul language. High Overseer Campbell initiated the internal stimuli in conjunction with external stimuli, with expected results. Dr. Killjoy reported the symptoms as noted above, with the addition of involuntary movement of the legs and pelvis, and increased levels of verbal discomfort. There was a notably large amount of normal female fluids generated by the use of the blunted haft in conjunction with the Granville Hammer. No signs of witchcraft were compelled from the accused. It is at this time in the interrogation that the addition of increasing levels of pain were inflicted on the accused with the purpose of compelling from her person hidden veins of witchcraft. The accused did level a volley of verbal abuse toward High Overseer Campbell, who made use of the dental key and the surgical dioptra used in the previous internal exam. Dr. Killjoy noted the breakage of teeth and minor lacerations of the soft parts of the mouth. With the fifth level of pain stimuli, the accused began having multiple violent paroxysms, and expelled a copious amount of normal female fluids. High Overseer Campbell continued the internal and external stimuli, with the assisting Overseers concurrently applying increasing levels of pain stimuli. There were no signs of witchcraft compelled from the victim. High Overseer Campbell stated for the record that the accused continued to show unusually high levels arousal in the stages of interrogation which would render the innocent otherwise unconscious. Toward the end of the eighth level of pain stimuli, the accused began to shed a mix of skin, viscera and blood from the vagina and anus. The accused showed signs of being spent and became lethargic. At approximately 4 o' clock in the morning during the eleventh level of pain stimuli, the accused began to show signs of some sort of demonic possession or otherwise unworldly ailment. There was an unexpected moment of a burst of energy from the accused and then **[the report ends here].**

**Addendum to report by High Overseer Campbell, on this Day 26, The Month of Songs, 1830:**

By order of the Office of the High Overseer, I, Thaddeus Campbell, High Overseer, do judge the accused, Keziah Mason Everleigh to be a heretic and an instrument of The Outsider. Her execution was summarily carried out at or around 5 o' clock in the morning of Day 26, The Month of Songs, 1830.


	9. Day 5: Into the night, Rose tells her story

Martin took his time walking back to the Old Port District. He needed the cold air to clear his head, and pull his mind away from the direction that the bond was inexorably pulling him the closer he got back to the apartment. He was not sure what to make of what the High Overseer had relayed to him. It was obvious that it was tied to the ritual, but nothing about the experience sounded true to anything the Abbey knew about the Outsider, or anything that he had seen reported from previous interrogations. It sounded more like something from the stories and tales of monsters and demons that he had heard as a child in Morley, and later during the examination of archaeological findings from the North of Gristol. He breathed in deeply of the damp air, reciting the strictures to calm and slow his racing mind, and to steel his will. He needed information, just information tonight. He had to keep focused on that.

He let himself into the apartment, and went into the kitchenette to fortify himself with a good belt of Flin, maybe two. He dropped his mask and the interrogation report package on the table, and noticed that Rose had unwrapped the black roses, and had arranged them in an old chipped teapot half full of water. The buds had opened, and the smell coming from them was so like her smell that he had to step away, step out onto the small landing and smoke while he thought of what to say, and how to best get what he needed out of her. Rose had seemed so sincere, so naive about matters of black magic. He found it hard to believe that she would be so under the care of what had amounted to be some sort of demon, a demon whose parting words were very similar to those found in the book. He thought about the timing of it. If he were correct, this woman turned into a monster right around the time that the bonding had completed between himself and Rose. He wasn’t sure what the implications were in that, what connection it had. It crossed his mind that the creature could be the wrach-hunllef – the Mother of Darkness, but even that didn’t quite make sense. Keziah Everleigh had been human and to Martin’s knowledge the black entities of the Void operated via proxy, not possession. So what was the creature, then? The mother - the _creature_ , had written something very similar to the ritual in that it would travel through a door opened through blood and pain. Had Keziah Everleigh been the doorway through which the Mother of Darkness appeared? He had seen nothing in his book to suggest that the vessel was a _physical_ doorway, only that a door would be opened. Perhaps that was a commonality in many of the summoning rituals in general, and Keziah's had been something more extreme? It didn't explain the disappearance of her physical body though. He knew the caustic gas didn't work in that way. Campbell knew it too, but never speculated further, at least not with Martin. Martin did not have much experience with such things outside of academic interest, but he did know that opening doors was a necessary part of such rituals, and there was much power in blood and pain, particularly when boosted by the alchemical nature of sex. Martin knew well Campbell's particularly brutal methods when it came to interrogating women. There was no telling what really happened in that interrogation room, what Campbell had unleashed. Martin had not engaged in the same horrific methods as Campbell with what he was doing with Rose, so felt fairly certain that the occurrences, while similar, were not likely linked. He hoped not, anyway.

He considered this further, lighting another cigarette and looking out over the slivers of the Wrenhaven that he could see through the gaps in the buildings. He could hear the first shouts of the number-book takers and gamblers calling out down at the Hounds Pit and knew that soon the sounds of coarse laughter and breaking glass would follow. Just another night in the Old Port District. He was surprised that Rose hadn’t come out to find him. Perhaps she was asleep. He flicked away his spent cigarette and turned to go inside.

Martin lit the lamps in the darkening great room, and went into the bedroom to see if Rose was asleep. He figured that she probably was, but he was wrong. He caught his breath at the sight of her. She was sitting at his desk in a small circle of light from his lamp, brushing her hair and looking into the small mirror propped on his desk. She was humming some tune, a half-tune that tickled at some part of his memory. She caught his eye in the mirror and smiled impishly around several hairpins clamped between her lips while taming her wild hair down into a neat bun that she gathered at the nape of her neck, and carefully pinned into place. She was fixing something to her hair, something that Martin couldn’t catch in the shadow. She stood and turned to him. She was wearing the short green jacket that nipped in at her waist and the fitted black breeches. She was barefoot, and under her jacket she wore nothing. Something told him that she was likewise bare under her breeches as well. Her small cleavage was just hidden by the lapels, and the freckles on her chest seemed far less vivid in the mellow glow of the lamp. The warm glow glinted her hair with sparks, small tendrils already escaping her careful bun and curling around her face. Fixed to her hair on one side above her ear, was one of the black roses still tightly in bud. She smiled and walked to him, attempting a seductive gait that was more endearing than awkward. He stood straight, tall and unmoving - looking down his nose at her. When he felt her hands creep up under his uniform jacket, he grabbed them gently and pulled them away. She looked puzzled, perhaps a bit hurt at his rebuff but when he told her that they needed to talk, she merely looked resigned and agreed to.

He took her by the hand and they walked through the greatroom, and he gestured for her to sit at the table in the kitchenette. He sat across from her, and between them was the interrogation report and his mask. He pushed the report toward her, and told her that there was something she needed to read. She picked up the packet, and slid out the interrogation report. She looked up at him, puzzled but picked it up and began to read. It did not take her long to finish the report. Her expression had not changed during the course of reading it, though Martin was sure that the passage about his involvement and the mention of Rose would have elicited at least _some_ reaction. She closed the report, and laid it on the table. She said nothing – merely stared at him with an unreadable expression. “Rose, tell me about your mother.”

******* Rose’s Story *******

What would you have me say? I never loved my mother, and I am not sorry that she is dead. I wish I could tell you that I am surprised by this, but I am not. My mother was an evil, cold and brutal woman. I never knew my father. He died before I was born, and all that she would ever tell me of him is that he was a philosopher from Morley, a student at the Academy and that he had served his purpose well. There was nothing of him in our home. No clothes, no papers, no books. Nothing. I only know his name – Howard Phillips Everleigh. I wonder what he was like. Did he inspire any joy or warmth in that woman’s heart? Had they loved? If they had, there was no evidence as such that I could ever see. I know now what excitement can be had between lovers, and I cannot imagine that it ever existed for her. I have never known what a mother’s love should be. She touched me only out of necessity, and never out of affection. She did not beat me, but she also did not love me.

I cannot answer to her involvement with the Outsider. I never saw anything in our home that would suggest any such involvement. As for my own, I told you that I had dreamed of him and I was truthful. I never saw him, but I knew he was there. I didn’t know who it was at first. I only knew that there was someone waiting for me. Sometimes he was up on a rooftop, other times at the top of a lighthouse overlooking the sea somewhere far away. He was always in shadow, never where I could see him directly. I thought it was my father, coming to me in my dreams and when I told my mother about the dreams she laughed at me. She told me that even in death, my father didn’t care about me and wouldn’t bother with trying to find me. I got my first blood not long after the dreams started. My mother was obsessed with knowing when my first blood would come. She would ask, and then later inspect my underclothing and bedding as if searching for something more than nefarious than just blood. I went to her when I got my first blood. I thought that I was ill, that I was dying. She took me into the washroom and threw a wet rag at me and told me to get myself cleaned up. She seemed pleased that I had finally gotten my moon time, but never divulged why.

Within a month, she had taken in a child into her care. She claimed it was the child of a distant relative from Baleton, a woman who had died and left the girl orphaned. It was not difficult to believe, as the girl was the very image of myself only three years younger and perhaps with darker skin. I know now that the girl had been snatched, but back then I had convinced myself that she was my cousin. The girl was not allowed to speak or interact with me, and my mother kept her close. At night, she would take the girl into her bed and I would hear sounds that haunt my dreams even now. I didn’t know what she was doing to the girl then. I only knew that the sounds were of pain, and only now do I recognize that they were of forced pleasure as well. My mother was experimenting on this girl, subjecting her to … _something_ , for a purpose I did not know and still do not know. Yes, I know what happened to her. When my mother was finished with whatever hellish things she was trying to accomplish, she sold the girl to an old barrister in the Legal District. The last I was able to find out, the girl now works at the Golden Cat and her ‘talents’ are unrivaled if the stories are true. Her name is Betty Riley, but she also works under the name Rose. My name. No, we’ve never spoken. I don’t know what I would say to her, or what she would say to me. I don’t want to know.

My mother ridiculed my dreams, but never failed to ask me about them. The dreams never changed. He was always just out of sight, always out of reach. I don’t know how I made the connection that it was the Outsider. I just remember waking up one morning with the conviction that it was. When I told my mother that I thought it was the Outsider, she just smiled and never asked me about it again. It was during this time that my mother became obsessed with my purity. I was not allowed to have friends, and the only interaction I was allowed was with a tutor – a cold prune of a woman who came to the house twice weekly to give me proper instruction. When I learned to read, I realized that there were worlds outside of this one that I need go no further to visit than to open a cover. When my mother would send me to market, I would sneak here and there stealing whatever penny novels and broadsheets that I could, and reading them into the night. As I finished them, I would sneak them back out and either replace them where I found them, or just leave them out in random places for others to take up. I suppose I became morose in the way that young girls do when they discover love. I discovered it in penny novels, and perhaps that colored my moods in such a way that had my mother redoubling her efforts to pry. She wanted to know if I had touched myself, and until … well, until recently I didn’t know what she meant by it. She was determined that I not know of these things, these very things that I realize now she had inflicted on Betty Riley. No, I don’t think it was a matter of ‘saving myself’. It was clear that I was not destined to marry as long as I was under her care. I’m not sure what her goal was. Perhaps it was a simple matter of getting a sadistic thrill from closing me off from the possibility of pleasure of any kind.

It wasn’t long ago though, that something changed. She seemed eager for me to be out of the house and I took full advantage of that. I walked the Port District often. I began to notice an Overseer in the neighborhood every so often. The uniform caught my eye, and the mask filled me with a dread that carried a touch of thrill. I followed him when I saw him, though always from a distance. He would disappear and I would walk about for days hoping for another glimpse. I always knew it was him, the tallest one – even masked. There was something in the way he walked, and carried himself. One day, an oddly warm day not too long ago, I saw him remove his mask and rub his hand across his face, and then through his hair. You were so handsome, Teague. I fell into an infatuation then, though I didn’t see you remove your mask again after that. Until ... well, you know. I wrote about you in my diary. Do you wonder how it came to be in your hands? My mother found the diary, read it and reported me. I think she wanted me to come to the same fate that she ultimately did. Why not just kill me outright? I don’t know. I think it was meant to be punishment for even considering staining the purity that she fought so hard to force me to maintain. Perhaps she got a nasty thrill at the idea of my punishment being debauchery, to teach me a lesson about daring to long for the touch of a man. Yes, she would have known about the interrogations, I’m sure, and what they entailed. She was obsessed with perversion, with pain and with blood. I’m glad that she died by the methods of which she was obsessed, and I feel no guilt in saying so.

I don’t understand the last part though. If she were dying, what would that burst of energy have been and why did the report end there?

**************

Rose didn’t say anything else after her last question. Martin wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her about the last part, but he knew after this that whatever Rose’s mother had been up to and what she actually was, Rose had no knowledge of it. She knew her mother as a monster, but had no idea how much of a true monster she had been. Martin could only speculate as to the uses that Rose’s mother had for Betty Riley, but it sounded very much like what Martin was undertaking now with Rose. Had she been _practicing_ on the girl as a preparation for the ritual? Why not just use Rose directly? It was clear that she possessed the necessary evil to do so. Why orchestrate such a ruse as turning her into the Overseers, knowing what the girl’s fate would likely be? Had it been anyone other than Martin, there is little doubt that Rose would be dead now. Instead, it had been the girl’s mother to die – and only because Martin had lied to make it so. Had he somehow thwarted a darker ritual in lieu of his own? He had no way of knowing. He wished he had been present during Keziah’s interrogation. Would he have lent his hand in subjecting her to the same extremes as Campbell? Hard to say. The idea of her spending multiple times at _level 5(!)_ was both horrifying and intriguing. Martin decided not to divulge the transformation of Keziah Everleigh, at least not yet. He needed to review his notes, and re-read some of the passages to see if there was anything that would shed light on what surely was not the work of coincidence.

Martin breathed out, looking down at the table and told Rose that there was more but that he would tell her another time. He stood, gathering the interrogation report and grabbing his mask. Rose stood as well, and came to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist under his uniform jacket, and smiled up at him. She asked him to put his mask on. Martin was a bit taken aback by this request, but did so anyway. He stood towering over her, a fully uniformed, booted, masked Overseer – the very sight of which would strike terror in most. He looked down at her through his mask, and a chill worked its way through nearly every part of him. As an Overseer, he wanted to bend this girl to his will. As a man, he wanted to tear her breeches from her body, bend her over and sink all the way into her in one thrust. He stood on the edge between the two halves of himself, his gloved hands finding their way to her waist. Her breathing quickened, and he reached up to take off his mask. She reached up, stopping his hand. “Leave it on, Overseer.”

He reached down, gripping her upper arms tightly and half-lifted, half-dragged into the bedroom. He found that the mask somehow created a baffle, a distance that allowed a coldness to creep into his touch and dance around the fire that she had brought to life inside of him. He let go of her arms, and she sunk to her knees in front of him. She brought her hands up the sides of his boots, and then up his thighs and under his jacket and worked her hands over him, around the hard contours under her hands. His cock was already raging hard, his mind racing in different directions as he looked down at her through his mask. He did not speak or touch her. Never had he engaged in such a thing fully uniformed, or even partially so before her. He liked it, this clash of ice and fire inside of him, the very wrongness of it thrilling to him. He let her unlace his breeches, and she reached in and pulled him out. She did not remove his breeches, instead she simply took him into her mouth all at once. Martin caught his breath, willing himself not to move or touch her as she worked her mouth on him, and her wet fingers in all the places her mouth could not reach.

He reached down, and grabbed her by the unravelling bun at the back of her neck and pulled her roughly up, the rosebud falling from her hair, and pulled her head back until she was staring up into the impassive face of his mask. He spun her around roughly, and bent her over the bed, immediately tugging down her breeches to her knees. He held one hand down on her head and tugged his glove off of his other hand with his teeth. He reached down to her face, and worked several fingers of his ungloved hand into her mouth wetting his fingers. Holding her head down, he took the tips of his fingers and dipped them into her from the back as far as he dared without breaking past the barrier there. She was already soaking wet, and he gathered this wetness on his fingers and wet the tip of himself down. He held her still on the bed with her ass up in the air, and eased the tip of himself ever so slightly into her hot center, nudging the barrier there – testing it, teasing it inward. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to simply take her right there. He eased in and out, by no more than a half inch, nearly going out of his mind at the obscenely wet sucking sounds he was making as he teased in and out of her very edges. He held her still with a hard grip - he could not risk her bucking back on him. He pulled out leaving a thick thread of shiny wet hanging between them. He angled the tip of himself up slightly, and positioned himself at the tight hole there. He hesitated for a moment to work some of the wet into her skin and then worked the tip of himself into her. She was moving now, arching her back down to move herself onto him. In one long, slow thrust he took her ass all the way to his stones holding her still, deep inside of her. She was gasping, unable to move - afraid to move with the considerable girth and length of him buried inside of her, pinning her still.

With his ungloved hand, he popped her ass hard and felt her clench down on him. He popped her again and again, until she cried out. He kept her pinned down hard against the bed, buried inside of her not daring to move himself. It would only take a stroke or two before he spent. He would have to be careful. He pulled out slowly, and then drove all the way back into her slowly. She was groaning and her legs shaking. He bent further over her, reaching around to dip two fingers into her wetness, working them up and down the length of her there until she was hoarsely panting. He stopped, popping her hard on the ass again to break her rhythm, and then pulled out again only to plunge into her again a little faster, a little deeper. He was close, but he wanted just a few more strokes. He pulled out and then slammed himself hard into her. She groaned deeply, and after one more hard stroke, he pulled out and away from her catching his breath. He turned her around and then pushed her down onto the bed on her back. She scrambled up to make room for him, and he crawled up to her. He knelt between her knees, removing his mask only at the last minute to take her into his mouth. She was clearly sore, her skin raw and an angry-red between her lips, but she opened her legs wider still for him. He sucked hard on her, drinking her in until her hands were in his hair, her nails digging into his scalp. He pulled away, and pulled her off the bed and to her feet. He undressed her fully, and then himself, and then walked her into the washroom where he drew a hot bath. They each took their time gently washing each other and tasting every area they touched of the other.

Later, much later, Martin lay in bed in state between asleep and awake thinking of the days ahead. There was only one more day left to go before staging the ritual. Tomorrow he would make sure that he had all of the necessary ingredients and materials, and that he had properly memorized the circle and the glyphs. He held Rose in his arms, her back to him - the smell of her hair reminding him of planting time in Morley – sweet, earthy, damp. He pulled her close, and the first wisps of doubt began to creep into edges of his thoughts. He would need to read the ritual carefully tomorrow. He hadn’t cared whether or not she survived the ritual until now, and while he knew this was because of the bonding – he didn’t care. He had suddenly found himself very much wanting her to survive it. Should he tell her of this ritual? He wasn’t sure, but his mind was convincing him that if she knew, there was a much greater chance of her surviving it. Perhaps even sharing in it with him, given her dreams of the Outsider. He pulled her even closer, wrapping her small curled frame protectively with the warmth and strength of his own and finally tipped into sleep.


	10. Day 6: Part 1 - Morning - Rose learns a lesson, Martin tells his story

Martin woke, and looked over at Rose sleeping peacefully. There was much to do to prepare for the ritual, and he knew that for this to work he would need to involve Rose fully. Thoughts raced through his mind about how she would react to what he was doing, and what he had done to get to this point. With the bond, he knew that she wasn’t likely to protest but his greater worry was that she would not be _truly_ willing – and without that factor, the summoning wasn’t likely to work.

Martin slid an arm under Rose and pulled her on top of him. She stirred and then settled in on him, nestling her head under his chin. He lightly stroked her back through her shirt. He had insisted on sleeping clothed – both of them. There was too great of a chance of a half-slumber slipup, equally great on both of their parts. As he held her, he reflected on his feelings for her. He had to be sure before asking her. Martin had been in love a few times, but it always ended the same. With time, he grew bored. Gentle lovemaking, soft sighs and a lifted knee around his back only satisfied the most basic of his needs – the need to spend. He was always left wanting more. He had turned to whores for a while, who were compliant and willing to be brutalized insofar as his coin reached but it was still not what he needed. He needed for that part of himself to be willingly accepted, welcomed – encouraged. With time, he simply willed himself to bury that need deep down tapping it only during interrogations usually to unsatisfying ends. He liked to hurt those which he could (or would) not fuck, but it was like scratching an itch with blunted dull fingernails. With Rose, he found that she nurtured that part of him that he had long learned to suppress – she encouraged it, even. He wasn’t sure if what he felt for her was love. It was all so entangled with the bond that it was hard to say. He did know one thing for certain though, he knew that they could continue to feed each other’s needs in perpetuity. Martin could not comprehend a scenario where he would grow bored of Rose or their coupling.

Rose had taken to the conditioning so quickly and completely that Martin knew now that he had not conditioned her, so much as drawn out an organic part of her being: a part of her deep inside that dovetailed completely with that part of himself that he shared with her. Martin had long given up on the idea of finding this sort of completion but now, here on the eve of the ritual he had found it – this unexpected gift. He thought about his original intentions – he had intended to lay her on the altar in the middle of the sigillum and bring her brutally into a sphere of blood and pain, and if she died – well, so be it. One less loose end to worry about. It was different now. He knew now that he could get her there without having to kill her, and for that he was grateful. He would share of this with her fully – this rare pairing was bound to generate an enormous amount of energy to drive the summoning. There was the promise of the power of the Void at his command, and this power was more than enough to satisfy one person – more than enough to satisfy two.

His mind made up, Martin deepened his strokes along Rose’s thin back gently waking her. After they talked, he would take her out into Dunwall with him. He would show her the city that she wouldn’t otherwise be able to see and would treat her to whatever she wanted – shopping, eateries, whatever she wanted. He was well aware of the raw energy that had kept them going. It had burned through them both, and neither had really eaten well in days. The hadn’t needed to. Today they would refresh and nourish themselves. The ritual demanded it, but moreover he just wanted to be with her somewhere out of the confines of their intimate shared space of each other.

Rose woke, propped herself up over him smiled sleepily down at him. She bent and to his surprise kissed him right on the tip of his slightly downpointed nose. It was such an innocent gesture, genuine and touching. Her hair was a wild tangle around her head, and Martin looked up at her lost in her impish smile, her freckles and her eyes. He knew he had made the right decision. She could help him greatly with the ritual in a number of ways. If she were helping him, it would be far easier to maneuver the ritual when it came to a certain point – he’d be free to use his hands in other ways. No better time to show her that part than now.

He smiled up at her, wrapped his hands around her waist and flipped her down onto the bed and rolled on top of her at the same time, parting her legs with his own. He smiled down at her, and she shivered – already clearly excited. He took her hands one by one and held them over her head and began slowly grinding himself against her, first in circles and then in firm up and down strokes. He was hard and even through his pants and hers, he could feel her warmth growing. Rose lifted her legs and crossed her ankles over his back, opening herself further to his movements. She was making low mmm mmm mmm noises and smiling with her bottom lip caught between her teeth and began moving against him in a way that was driving away his resolve.

He stopped and then told her that he had something to show her, something he wanted her to learn and for a brief moment, a shadow of disappointment flitted through her eyes as she was clearly wanting something other than a learning any sort of lessons. She unhooked her ankles and lowered her legs. Martin lowered himself down onto one elbow, and began running his free hand lightly over her belly slipping his fingers in through the gaps between her buttons on her shirt. Her arms were still up over her head and she stretched like a cat, shivering from his touch as she stretched. He unbuttoned her shirt slowly, bringing the sides of it down, and reached his hands up into her shift, lightly brushing the tips of her nipples. She arched into his touch, and her lips parted with the first quickened breaths.

“Rose, I want to show you something – something you need to know, to learn.” He spoke in a low voice, looking into her eyes as he tweaked and gently tugged at nipples bringing them to small sharp points under his touch. He unlaced her breeches, opening them at the top and pulling on them to make plenty of room. Give me your hand, the one you write with. She brought her left hand down, and he took it with his own. He lay his hand on hers, lightly lacing his fingers into hers and brought her hand up to her chest and guided it in circles. She hesitated, expressing fear of what he had promised if she had dared touch herself. Martin smiled down at her, assuring her that it was time to set aside that rule. He guided her hand down from her chest and down into her breeches. He parted her with her own finger, drawing it up through her wetness and began slow strokes up and down. He told her to bring her other hand to her chest, and to do as he had shown her. She did so, her hand gliding in small circles under her shift. He took his hand from hers, instructing her to keep going.

He could tell that she was not responding to her own touch. Her movements were mechanical, hesitant and her breathing had changed. He leaned down and sucked her earlobe into his mouth, and began whispering into her ear. He whispered the most blasphemous deviant things he could think of, all the ways he wanted to touch her, taste her, suck her – all the places on and in her body that he wanted to violate, and how he wanted to violate them. Her eyes closed and with a subtle shift, he noticed that her movements were becoming more organic, and her breathing began to change.

He kept whispering to her – dark things, filling her mind with himself. Her breathing became ragged, and the sounds wet. Very wet. She was falling into her own rhythms of pleasure, and she began to move under her own touch. She was wrenching at her nipples, and her hand was moving impossibly fast under her breeches. When her legs began to tremble he pulled her hand up and out of her breeches. Her eyes opened and she looked at him as he drew her wet fingers into his mouth, sucking the taste of her from her fingers. Her eyes looked glazed over, and her trembling slowed and slowed until it stopped. Martin grabbed the back of her head, and brought his mouth to hers, kissing her deeply – rashing her face with the roughness of the shadow of his beard. He wanted to keep going, perhaps flip her over and fuck her hard in the ass but decided against it. For now.

He drew away, shuffling to the edge of the bed where he sat up. “Rose, there is something we need to talk about.” He felt her move up behind him and she wrapped her arms around his neck and gently kissed the nape of his neck, the tips of the backs of his ears. He held her hands in his own, and said “Come, there is much we need to discuss.” He stood, and took her hand as she stood. He told her to go sit at the kitchen table, and he would follow shortly. She did, and Martin quickly gathered up the book, the notes and a few of the items that were on his inventory list for the ritual and put them into a small box.

Martin walked into the greatroom and laid the items out on the table, taking them from the box one by one. Rose looked at them with fascination. She asked if she could touch them, and Martin nodded. She gently picked up the old book, with its weathered green leather cover – the worn rough spots having the appearance of lichens or moss, lending to its eldritch appeal. She opened it, smelled the deep musty history in the pages, and flipped through the incomprehensible diagrams and strange sigils and characters for a moment and then moved on to the other objects on the table. Martin noticed that her expression did not change when she picked up the bonecharm and held it in her hands. He had believed her when she said she had never seen occult objects before, and this did nothing but confirm it. She turned it over in her hands, a puzzled look on her face. Martin explained that it was a bonecharm, a trinket that had been fashioned from shards of whalebone, held together by the wire and metal fittings. Rose’s eyes went wide – she had heard of these, but never thought to seek one out, much less hold one. The other bits and pieces were more ordinary looking: a thick stub of chalk that had been enriched with desiccated powdered whale brain, several ambergris candles – eight in all, a small silver bowl, a thin ornamental dagger with an ivory-inlaid handle, and various other items. After touching this and that, turning things over in her hand and inspecting the various items Rose sat back, and asked if they may smoke on the balcony.

Martin and Rose stood on the small window balcony smoking and looking out over the Old Port District. It was still a little chilly, but the sun looked like it was going to burn through the clouds by noon. Neither spoke for a little while. Rose finally asked what an Overseer was doing with things like this – objects that would result in a death sentence for ordinary citizens. Martin looked down at her, smiling. “I’m no ordinary Overseer, Rose. Surely you have noticed?” Rose blushed and looked down, a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth. “Let’s go in. I’ll explain.”

Martin and Rose sat back down at the table, and Martin explained what the book was and where he had gotten it. He asked her if she had heard of Daud, the assassin who led up the Whalers in Dunwall. Rose said that she had certainly heard of him, but only in the context of gruesome broadsheets and tall tales. She knew that he was rumored to be marked by the Outsider, but wasn’t sure she believed it. Martin assured her that it was true, and that it was Daud himself who had given him the book. Rose looked shocked at the notion that Martin was on speaking terms with Daud. “More than you know, Rose” he had replied. Martin started from the beginning, and told her his story.

******* Martin’s Story *******

I born in Morley in 1795 under a different name than I use now, and had a very ordinary childhood. My father was a gentleman farmer and we ran a modest farm. We grew a variety of things: apples, ornamental flowers – orchids, primarily, and had a decent herd of ox that we tended to. I did not have any brothers or sisters, so you can imagine my life from an early age was consumed with work in helping my parents run the farm with what little a child my age was able to do. There were a few employees that were hired on to help with manual labor, but that did little ease my workload.

What? Oh, no – I had thought of that when you told me about your father. I did wonder if knew him or of him, but I’m sorry - his name did not ring any bells. I was very young when I was living there, so there wouldn’t have been an opportunity to know of him outside of listening to my parents talk with their employees or friends.

I had a tutor who came to the farm a few times a week on an irregular basis, so I had the basis for a well-rounded education by the time we left Morley. Like you, I grew to love reading and with time longed for a life that held more than the promise of taking over the farm. Even from that young age, I knew that I did not want a farmer’s life. My tutor read to me from The Castle of Ontranto, and from that I formed a dream of a life with castles, and knights and dark towers and ancient prophecies.

It wasn’t long before there was a shift in Morley, a sea change that carried my family away from Morley. I was young when Empress Olaskir was assassinated, but I remember many things from that time. Our farm was in a very rural area near Caulkenny, so we were outside of the worst of the violence during those times. For a couple of years, we lived very leanly – rarely leaving the farm like we used to. There were no more seed runs or exchanges, no hauling of meat or produce or orchids to neighboring towns or cities. It was too risky. Highwaymen were taking full advantage of the chaos, and traveling merchants were often left hanging by the roadside as warnings against travel.

As Morley tore itself apart against the onslaught from Gristol, famine crept in from all sides unseen, unnoticed until it was too late. The Insurrection fell, and famine rushed in to eat at the spoils. Our farm had slowly failed over the course of the Insurrection. My family had insulated our farm, and without regular exchanges or sales it was only a matter of time before money ran out. The workers left one by one, and then came the day when my father sold all of his oxen, all remaining orchids and bulbs, and let the fields go fallow. I remember my da’ shuttering the farm, my mother packing only what we could carry and the quiet conversations between my da’ and many shady men in making arrangements to leave Morley for Gristol. There was little doubt in my da’s mind that staying in Morley would be pointless. Our livelihood was gone, and there was no longer a legacy to leave to me there. It was time to form a new legacy.

Within a short time, the sizeable amount of money made from the sale of the assets of our farm bought us clandestine passage to Gristol. We were snuck onboard a whaling vessel heading for Tyvia, and were let off near Redmoor. Our destination, like many others like us – was Karnaca. We didn’t make it further than Old Lamprow. My parents settled there, and for a few years we lived relatively comfortably. My father worked on a nearby farm, and my mother would take in sewing to supplement my father’s income. I was fifteen when my father died. He was working in the fields, and one day simply dropped dead where he stood. My mother arranged to have his body brought to us, and between the two of us managed to dig a deep enough hole to rest his bones in. I will never forget what it was like. I was crying as I dug, blisters forming under blisters on my hands, and I was trying to put the small of my father’s corpse out of my mind as I dug. Were it that my last memories of him were something other than the smell of his remains. When my mother wasn’t digging, she knelt beside my father’s body, crying without making a sound.

I tried to care for my mother as best I could afterward, but she did little more than stare out into nothing and ate less and less. Not more than six months later she died as well. I went to wake her one morning, and she had died in her sleep. My only consolation is that their deaths were swift and merciful. I left that day, leaving my mother where she lay in her bed, locking the door behind me. With the exception of the clothes on my back, and my pocketknife I left everything I owned behind. Even my name. What’s that? No, my given name is of no import. I do, however, continue to use that name as a means of purchasing or acquiring items that I would not be otherwise able as Teague Martin. This apartment is owned under that name, in fact.

At fifteen, I was at a crossroads in my life. I could go on to offer myself out as an apprentice and become an honest workingman, or I could take up an entirely different style of life. I chose the latter. I am not proud of the things I did back then. I joined up with a group of young men in Old Lamprow who introduced me to the life of high adventure that I longed for as a boy. I became a land-locked pirate of sorts, a highwayman and a murderer. We called ourselves the High Rippers, and by my blade they lived up to this name. I learned that I enjoyed making others hurt in different ways. Yes, I see you blushing Rose – yes, even in that way. I became known for being particularly brutal and sadistic, and soon even the hardiest and brave of those gang of boys came to fear me. I carried a darkness within myself that I carry to this day. This darkness is what drew me to the Outsider. Why Rose, don’t look so surprised. I first heard about him from a girl that I had made acquaintance with, a girl only a few years older than myself.

She had been orphaned from an early age, and spent much of her life panhandling in the streets of Old Lamprow. When she wasn’t doing so, she was tagging along with us. She had taken a liking to me for some reason. I had never been particularly friendly with her, nor unfriendly – just indifferent. I had not an ounce of interest in her, until she told me one day about how she had been dreaming of a dark-eyed boy, a demon who would whisper things to her in her sleep. She said that he had told her things about me, and at first I did not believe her. She said that the boy with the black eyes had told her that she should pursue me and that she was meant to wake me up inside. Now, at that time I had not had a woman nor did I feel a particular need and I was convinced that she was making shit up to get closer to me. It sounded ridiculous to me, romantic and overblown but it was at this time that I realized that I had an opportunity. I was given a chance to inflict whatever I liked on a willing person, a girl even. Perhaps it was time that I knew a woman after all. 

I walked her to an alleyway that had been sealed off on the open side, and we slipped through some boards that had been pried loose. I took her to the back of the alley in the dark and had my way with her. I took her right up against the wall. I had no idea what I was doing but she did, and in just moments I found my way up inside her. It was as if a dam broke inside me. I was flooded with thoughts of fucking, with violence and with pain. I fucked her as hard as my body would let me but I could not seem to spend. I threw her down on the ground and when she opened her legs for me, I took her again only this time I found both of my hands around her throat. I squeezed and she began to struggle and this only made me want to fuck her harder. She clawed at my hands and when she was able to force them from her throat, she called me by my given name. I stopped immediately, grabbed her by the hair and threatened to destroy her face if she didn’t tell me where she learned that from. She sat up and said that the boy with the black eyes had told her what to say, and that doing so would be what woke me up inside. And it did. I spent the better part of the next half hour violating every hole in her body, alternately beating her and fucking her until I spent, and she lay dead underneath me. I left her body there in that alley, and I left Old Lamprow that night and walked south, stealing and killing my way down until I reached Dunwall. I arrived in Dunwall in 1811, and met a young man newly arrived from Karnaca named Daud. It was from him that I learned that the dark-eyed boy was the Outsider. 

He and I aligned ourselves for a time, bound by a mutual desire to reach the Outsider. Each of us had our reasons for finding him, and after a few years Daud found him but I did not. He had found him by way of the Academy, and I thought that perhaps I could find him by hitching myself to an entity that was dedicated to rooting out all instances and evidence of the Outsider. What better way to seek out the Outsider than from within the Abbey? The resources are unlimited, and as an Overseer I also have ample opportunity to feed my own private needs – to an extent anyway.

It was almost exactly a week ago that Daud sent me that book. I read it in a night, and the next day you were brought in for questioning. This is what I wanted to talk to you about, Rose.

**************

Rose sat wide-eyed across from Martin, and he could tell that she did not know what to say. He was sure that she was shocked by what he had told her of himself, and knew that in time there was far more he would tell her that would make what she had heard seem like a gentle parable. He talked about the ritual, and what it entailed. The entire ritual depended on the willing sacrifice of innocence – complete innocence, a sacrifice of blood and pain. Rose had been practically gifted to him for this purpose: her innocence was complete in that she had no knowledge of the pleasures available to her through her own body. In the course of the ritual, he would show her those pleasures, and break her open at the point of her first time spending, spilling the blood of her virginity upon the altar and opening a doorway through which the Outsider would be compelled to walk though. In its simplest terms, her willing sacrifice of her virginity and the pain and blood that resulted would summon the Outsider – along with the other critical factors of the ritual, of course.

Rose looked puzzled for a moment, and asked had she not already spent with him multiple times? Martin smiled at her innocent question, and assured her that she had not. He had brought her to the very edge to prepare her for the ritual, but had not allowed her to actually do so. Her eyes widened at this – she asked if there were truly more, an even greater pleasure? Martin nodded. With that settled, Rose asked at length about the Outsider and Martin informed her of what he knew about him. She asked what he intended to do once the Outsider appeared before them, and Martin said that he was sure he would know when the time arrived. _They_ would know. All he needed now was her consent – her willingness. It would be so much more powerful if she joined him in this instead of simply being used for something she wouldn’t otherwise understand.

“Teague.”

“Yes?”

“Will it hurt?”

“Yes. But you will like it.”

“After it is over, will you keep me here with you?”

“Yes.”

“For … always?”

“Always and forever, Rose.”

“I will.”


	11. Day 6, Part 2 - Midday

Martin was waiting for Rose to finish getting ready to head out into the day. Their first stop would be the Office of the High Overseer, and Martin was admittedly a little nervous. Though Rose was officially in his custody, there would be little from stopping High Overseer Campbell from demanding ‘personal questioning’ that would certainly exclude Martin if he saw so fit. Martin’s thoughts were a froth of anxiety, concern, and most unusually for him… jealousy. He did not want anyone else touching Rose – not physically and certainly not intimately. Jealousy was not part of Martin’s general nature. In his life, only Daud’s mark had incited it in him. He had never felt it over a woman before, and it was a feeling that he realized that he liked in a strange way. The inherent internal weakness generated by jealousy presented a challenge to him, a constant reminder to stay vigilant in maintaining his upper hand at all times – vigilant with others and overall with himself.

He was pulling up his gloves and straightening his belt and field suspenders and tightening the buckles when Rose walked up behind him. He turned and found his breath nearly taken away at the sight of her. She was wearing the green jacket, and had added a subtly striped vest underneath, and her high black boots with the form-fitted breeches. She had reddened her lips and cheeks with a bit of crushed strawberry, and had arranged her hair in an unusual but attractive style. One side of her hair had been tightly braided back close to her head, unravelling and falling loose with the other side of her hair brushing her collarbone. She had pinned a black rose in the braid in her hair, and had a few pinned to her jacket lapel. The roses had not wilted a bit, and Rose’s skin was fresh and rosy-scrubbed. She looked exotic and wild for Dunwall, and he was delighted to have her by his side. He had to force his mind away from the delights he was looking forward to with her later in the evening. He liked to imagine any number of things that he could do for fun or spite to throw a shock in the Brothers at the Office of the High Overseer, but he knew that walking in with an especially stiff prick and a beautiful young woman would not be one of the better ideas even this close to the Fugue Feast. Particularly not with Campbell, provided he was even there today. This time of year, a day or two before the Fugue Feast, the work slacked off considerably whether there was any left to do or not but Martin felt compelled to at least turn up and pretend to check on whatever waited for him at his desk. He needed to return Keziah Everleigh’s file back to the archive, and retrieve Rose’s while he was at it. He felt that particular file would have a better home with himself, for a number of reasons.

Martin gave a low whistle, and shook his head. “Girl, the very sight of you has me considering breaking at least five strictures this morning.” Rose blushed prettily, and waited for Martin to clip on his mask. He guided her out, and the two of them headed out into the streets of Dunwall. As much as Martin wanted her to take his arm, he resisted offering it. She was legally his and under his custody so he wasn’t worried about being seen about with her. It was expected that people who were in simple custody to an Overseer would be seen with them. Seen as a lover though, and in uniform at that? Too risky. He knew Brothers who would take simple custody of a given man or woman to keep them to themselves, and then fuck it up by slipping a little or suspiciously overcompensating in front of the wrong eyes. Even married Overseers were not seen with their wives in public, or at official events with them. He supposed that is where the myth came from that Overseers were forbidden from having intimate relationships, or being married. It was all about tactful discretion.

They spoke little during the walk, but took opportunities to steal glances at one another and find excuses to brush their hands together, or rest a hand on the other’s back. The air was cool and fragrant with the smells of cooking and perfume, incense and woodsmoke. The Fugue Feast was imminent, and the streets were coming alive with color and fragrance and music. There was a soft-focus gentle glow over everything, and people passed them laughing and chattering. They walked along in a comfortable silence, simply enjoying the walk and the rare sunshine.

They turned the corner onto Clavering, and Martin saw the flower vendor up ahead selling flowers at a decent clip. His inventory looked more lush than it had before and he could see Rose eyeing the stand. Martin guided her over to the flower stand telling her to pick whatever she liked, and the vendor nodded a greeting at him as before with a bland smile. Rose said “Oh! My favorite! I’ll take a …” The vendor interrupted her with a single raised finger, and then turned to pluck a flower from the many he had displayed. He wrapped and handed her a single flower – a highly fragrant dewy flower with thick white petals and lush yellow stamen. “A lily. You will have a lily, young lady.” Rose blushed and smiled and asked him how he knew. A look passed between the vendor and Rose, and for a brief moment Martin felt his hackles rise. The moment passed as quickly as it had come on, though and when Martin handed the vendor a coin the vendor waved it away wishing them a good rest of the day. The vendor bowed his head low, smiling in his strange way and Martin and Rose continued on toward the Office of the High Overseer.

Rose was entranced with the flower, breathing the scent of it deeply as she walked by Martin’s side. He liked seeing her happy. His mind touched on other things he would like to give her to see that same simple delight on her face, and made a note to pass through the marketplace on the way to the other places he wanted to show her after they left the Office.

Martin could tell as they walked into Holger Square that Rose was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. She eyed the stocks in front of the statue of old Ben Holger as they walked by, and asked Martin if they were often used. Martin told her that they were used occasionally, but the Brothers didn’t tend to commit offenses serious enough to warrant the stocks. They walked past the stocks, and then made their way to the Office. It was quiet, as Martin expected. The only Brother he saw was Overseer Juibal, who sat glumly at his desk chipping away at his paperwork. He looked up and nodded to Martin, and then did a double take when he saw Rose. He nodded to her too, and then went about the business of appearing very busy, far too busy to talk. Martin went to his desk and shuffled through his papers, finding nothing that required his attention or anything that couldn’t wait until the new year. He rearranged a few things, sorting his stack according to priority without really knowing why. He didn’t expect to come back after the Fugue Feast, but his habits were comforting to him nonetheless. He walked Rose into the archive, and he removed his mask and asked quietly if she was ok. Her face was a little pale as they passed the holding cell, and he wondered if she was thinking of her mother as well.

They walked up into the quiet archive, and Martin quickly found the files that he was looking for. He took out Rose’s file packet, and replaced it with Keziah’s. Martin handed Rose her file packet, and asked her to check to see if her confiscated belongings were accounted for. She took a look into the thick packet, saw her diary and Martin saw her sigh in relief. He smiled at her, and without thinking stroked her check with a gloved finger. She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his and he was overcome with a wave of raw want and need of her. He needed to get out of here. Against every bit of common sense that he had, he slowly walked Rose back against a shadowy corner of the small records alcove and took her face in his hands drawing her mouth to his. He kissed her deeply and slowly, tasting her mouth and nipping lightly at her bottom lip. His heart was racing, and his thoughts were spinning nearly out of control. He drew away and looked down at her and said everything to her with his eyes that he had no words for. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then guided her out. He clipped his mask back on, and when they were walking down the small stairs to the first level of the archive and then out the side door they ran nearly head on into High Overseer Campbell. 

Campbell looked distracted, as he generally did and nodded a hello to Martin. He looked down at Rose, and brought his fingers up under her chin, tilting her face up to his and gave her a chilly smile. He spoke to Martin without looking away from Rose. “Well, Martin, I see your ward seems to have thrived in your custody.” Campbell’s eyes glittered in the low light of the hallway as he turned Rose’s chin slightly left and right, studying her face. “The resemblance is uncanny. I’d swear it was the mother herself.” Martin watched as Campbell’s thumb gave an ever so slight brush over Rose’s bottom lip and Martin immediately added Campbell to the list of choffers whose heads he intended to see roll one day. Rose’s eyes were shiny and flat with fear, and Martin knew that it was time to go. They were standing right in front of the Interrogation room door, and Martin did not want to think about what would happen if Campbell tried to drag Rose in there. Martin told Campbell that there were some papers that he needed to get from his office, and if he would be so kind as to excuse them, and so on. Martin walked away with Rose, away from the Interrogation room and away from Campbell. He could feel Campbell’s eyes on them as they walked away.

Martin bypassed his desk altogether, and headed to his locker to grab his spare clothes. He ducked into the washroom and quickly changed, and after calling out a ‘good day’ to Brother Juibal, he and Rose walked over to the laundry facility and Martin finally got his uniform checked in for cleaning. Like every year before during this time, the laundry unit was crammed with uniforms that needed to be cleaned, and masks to be touched up and polished. There was no better time for an Overseer to have his uniform tended to, as the Fugue Feast had no need of Overseer services. The clerk looked as resigned as ever at yet another Overseer added another uniform to the burgeoning pile. “Brother Martin” he mumbled glumly and nodded as he took Martin’s uniform. Once that was done, they headed briskly out of Holger Square and up Clavering heading toward the Distillery District. It was only after they were a block or so away from the Office that Martin realized that Campbell had not noticed Rose carrying her file. Martin did not care to speculate how differently the day would have ended had he noticed.

His spirits lifted as they got farther away from the Office, and he noticed that hers seemed to as well. Martin knew there would very likely be an impromptu market set up in the square on the waterfront, and he looked forward to being able to walk along the waterfront with Rose. He felt much lighter without the uniform and mask. His clothes, though slightly rumpled were crisp and clean. He had caught Rose peeking at him a number of times – she hadn’t seen him in anything other than a uniform, and he supposed he did look quite different as a civilian. He was wearing a soft white cotton roughspun high-collar shirt with the buttons undone to his chest, his old leather suspenders, and dark brown serge trousers and his boots. His hair was blowing freely in the breeze – it felt good to give his hair a break from the comb and hair oil. His hair carried a bit of a curl, and Rose would reach up every now and again to tweak a wavy bit of a curl in her fingers lightly teasing him about his messy hair – asking when he could expect a ‘written notice of proper hygiene and grooming from the Secretary of the High Overseer’. He teased her back, gently tugging a wild curl here and there on her head, pretending to be burned by its fiery appearance. They laughed and walked along and each, for the first time experienced their first moments together of what so many others took for granted: the simple pleasures of companionship and affection. Neither Martin nor Rose took notice of the flower vendor’s stare and cryptic smile as they passed him.

The waterfront at the Distillery District was vibrant and flush with life. Vendors from all over the Isles had set up booths swathed with vividly colored drapes, and the many wares displayed winked temptingly in the sunlight. The air was full of the smell of the river – a deep green smell rich with tannins, and woven throughout the heady smells of pastries, breads, grilling meats and perfumes of all kinds. There were clothing booths displaying various costumes and accessories that would be considered deeply scandalous any other time of the year. He had no problem imagining Rose in a number of the outfits: strappy shiny black leather, scanty lace, delicate transparent silks.

They walked amongst the booths, and along the way picked from this and that. Martin bought a packet of ginger and poppy imbued Sanjica cigarettes, and several bottles of spirits that were otherwise unavailable in Gristol. He followed Rose around the booths, and for her he bought several ornate whalebone clips and small combs for her hair and lengths of dark green velvet ribbon that she had picked out. What caught her eye most though, was an ornate bottle of sandalwood and rose perfume that was on display along with many other Serkonan toiletry wares. She held the bottle in her hands carefully, turning it this way and that admiring the delicate roses and thorns cast in gold that wrapped the fat bottom of the teardrop-shaped lacrimal bottle, and wound their way up in delicate threads along the side of the bottle. The atomizer was a pale pink, and Rose could not resist giving herself a spray of the perfume. Martin watched her as she breathed in of the scent, closing her eyes – lost in the smell of it. He bought it for her right away. The scent wove with her own natural earthy smell in a way that drove him damn near to the edge. He found that perfume on a women did little more than mask a women’s essence but this enhanced the smell of her in a way he had never experienced. The surprise and delight in her eyes when he handed the vendor the considerable coin was to him worth ten times what he paid for the perfume.

They ate a little – sharing a skewer of grilled Tyvian horker and a container of mixed berries from Morley mixed with chunks of exotic Serkonan fruits. Martin purchased a demi bottle of Tyvian red, and together they walked to the waterfront. He helped her over the barrier by the pier, and they sat on the rocks there watching the ships glide by on the water, smoking the sweet intoxicating cigarettes and sharing the wine. Rose was nestled up against him with her back to him, and his arm was wrapped around her protectively. Martin’s mind was calm, calmer than it had been in a while – he knew it was more than the Sanjica and wine though. He had this beautiful creature in his arms, his mate carrying inside her parts of her heart and soul that created a tight weave with his own. Was it _just_ the bond? Was he truly in love with her? He didn’t care. He tipped his head down, breathing in the scent of her hair, knowing only that he wanted this moment to stretch into forever. The sun began to set over the Wrenhaven, and it was time to go. Martin stood and stretched, and then helped Rose to her feet, pulling her up into a gentle kiss that quickly became searing – he could not wait to get her back to the apartment, and from the way she was sucking in his kiss and trembling in his arms, he knew that she was of the same mind.


	12. Day 6, Part 3: Darkness Falls

Martin and Rose took their time walking back, stopping only when one dragged the other into a dark corner or alcove for a deep kiss. As they made their way back, the kisses became more urgent, buttons loosened and their hands ventured further underneath the other’s clothes. At the edge of the Distillery District, Martin led Rose into a shallow alleyway. They were just out of sight of the people milling by, perhaps just _in_ sight if someone were to look closely. They sat their bags down, and Martin walked Rose up against the wall of the alleyway his hands firm on her hips and when he could walk her back no further he leaned down and kissed her deeply. He could feel the sounds she was making through his kiss and added his own as her fingertips slipped in between the shirt buttons over his belly, playing lightly with the furred trail leading down into his breeches. He wanted her so badly, right here - but held off. This sort of ‘in plain sight’ cavorting was unfamiliar to Martin, and somewhere deep down his sense of self-preservation kept him alert to possible consequences should he be recognized taking his ward up against the wall like a two-penny standup. 

He would, however, not let this stop him from touching her here, and there, and there. The lapels of her jacket angled sharply down her chest, sharply enough that he could comfortably work his hands underneath them and the vest that she wore underneath it. He rolled his thumbs over her nipples, and pinched and pulled at her first lightly and then harder, much harder. Her kisses became hotter, and she was pulling him closer – close enough to straddle his thigh stroking herself down while firmly working her hand over his nearly painfully-hard cock through his trousers. Out of the side of his vision, he could see people walking by but none looking into the small alleyway. He was nervous at first, but as they worked each other into heat he began to enjoy the thrill of it and soon cared not at all if anyone saw them or not. He kept one hand to her breast, and moved the other down between her legs matching the firmness of her strokes on him with those of his own on her. They caught each other’s rhythm quickly, and the kisses became sharp as they nipped at each other. His mind was flooded with so many different thoughts, emotions, ideas and as he drew away from her to catch his breath something clicked hard in his mind – a decision made that he hadn’t even been conscious of processing. He pulled away from her, smiling at her look of confusion and took her hand – rushing them back toward the Distillery District market.

She ran along with him, laughing at the mad dash they were making. Martin did not hesitate or slow down. He had seen something at the market at one of the stands, and he knew now that he must have it for Rose. He had never been more sure. They slowed as they reached the market, each panting lightly – still high off of the heat of each other. Martin went straight to the stand, and told the vendor what he wanted. Rose’s eyes grew large as the goods exchanged hands with coin. Martin took the bags from Rose and handed her over what he had gotten for her. She looked down at the long white gown, full-sleeved and made of a flowing fabric that felt like silk but far finer. The cut of the gown was full, but the fabric was the sort that would cling to the form rather than hide it. It was a work of art, this gown – it had elaborate hand-stitched patterns in the demure bodice and sleeves, so delicately stitched that one had to be close to see the intricate workings of the interwoven shapes. It was light, and Rose ran her fingers across the fabric in wonder. She looked up at him in surprise. “Teague, this… this is a wedding dress!” Martin looked down at her and smiled, saying nothing. The look on her face at that moment in the fading light of the Distillery District Waterfront was one that he would carry with him for a long time, for better or for worse.

It was dark when they returned to the apartment. There was much to do to prepare for the ritual, but right now that was far from Martin’s mind as they walked up the stairs to his rooms. All he could think about was having Rose to himself. She was buried in his brain and his heart, stuck fast like thorns in wool. He had never been so consumed like this before – so completely that he did not care to question it. All he knew is that he must have her. Something within her pulled at him, tugged at something unnamed inside of him, unknowable even to himself. He wanted nothing more than to give that of himself, and take of her in return. He had always thought love a form of madness, and now he knew that to be true – a wonderful madness, beyond all expectation. They placed their bags on the table in the greatroom, and Martin walked around lighting the oil lamps while Rose poured them each a stiff couple of drams of Morley white whiskey picked up from the market. After the lamps where lit, Martin started gathering a few things: a blanket, some pillows and a cot and told Lily that he would be back in a few moments. She smiled, asking him what he was up to and Martin just winked as he took the things out of the apartment and closed the door behind him.

Martin walked up to the top floor, and then unlocked the roof service door and walked out onto the roof of his building. The clear sky of the day had held into the night, and the full moon was shining brightly from behind high fast moving clouds. It was chilly, but not cold. Martin set up the cot, shook out the blankets and laid them with the pillows on the cot. It was relatively clean up on the roof, but he took the old push broom that was in the roof maintenance supply closet and brushed what little debris was up there into small piles and then sent them over the side of the building on the Dead Man Alley side.

There were no lights up here, but the brightness of the moon more than made up for it. All across Dunwall, he could see the many lights twinkling across the city – colored lights were being lit now everywhere in anticipation of the Fugue Feast. He could hear faint threads of music from the street musicians, and even the Hound Pits Pub had far more festive than seedy bursts of shouts and laughter floating up above the streets. He felt nearly complete now – in this incomprehensible set of events in his search for the Outsider, he had managed to find Rose and through her, found himself. What would happen once they summoned the Outsider?

He had to admit that the past few days with Rose had found his thoughts turning helplessly and steadily toward Rose and a future with her, and away from whatever future he had meant to exact through the Outsider. Tomorrow was the last day before the Fugue Feast, and Martin intended to take Rose to the Office first thing to prepare and sign their marriage paperwork. He knew Brother Juibal would be there, and Martin would ask him to serve as witness and officiate – he could even bring his hound Ren for all Martin cared. He smiled to think of the look on Brother Juibal’s face when he approached him in the morning. After they were married on paper, they would have all day to prepare for the ritual, and there on the altar at the stroke of midnight, he would truly make her his wife, with the Outsider pulled from the Void to bear witness. He took a moment to light a cigarette, and looked out over the city lost in his thoughts as he looked out over the streets of Dunwall.

Martin walked back downstairs to his apartment and when he opened the door, Rose was not there. The packages were unpacked on the table, and the two whiskeys sat next to the packet of Sanjica cigarettes. “Rose?” he called out, looking in the kitchenette and then out on the small balcony. His bedroom door was closed, and he figured she must be in the washroom so he left her to her privacy. He picked up the Morley white whiskey swirling it in the glass and sniffed in the sharp medicinal smell of the powerful ‘shine. There was a hint of apple somewhere deep in the high-proof sting and he knew it was going to be good.

He brought the glass to his lips, and stopped short when Rose opened the bedroom door and stood before him. She was wearing the dress, a dab of the sandalwood and rose perfume and nothing else. Her feet were bare, and she had unbraided her hair and it curled and tangled wildly around her face. She looked like a woodland fairy from the old Morley children’s tales, beautiful and wild. He picked up the other glass, and handed it to her and slipped the Sanjica cigarettes in his trouser pocket. He took off his boots, and rolled the bottoms of his trousers, took her hand, and walking barefooted together, led her up to the roof.

Rose stood at the edge of the roof looking out in wonder over the lights of the city and the colorful lights on the riggings of the ships that floated along the still black water of the Wrenhaven. The breeze blew the flowing fabric of the dress, floating it around her, and Martin could see clearly her compact curves thrown into silhouetted shadow by the moonlight. The breeze played at her curls and he caught the scents of her perfume and of the strawberry-rose from her hair on the breeze. He walked to her side to join her, and they sipped at the whiskey and he lit them a Sanjica, which they shared in a slow comfortable silence.

The night took on a magical quality through the heady fumes of the whiskey and the mellow high of the Sanjica. Martin took their empty glasses and set the beside the cot, and then took her into his arms leading her in a slow dance on the rooftop – dancing to silent music that each heard in the other’s heart. It seemed to go on forever, this moment. He asked her in a whisper what her full name was and she replied, and with no hesitation he told her his own – his given name, which no-one alive knew now save for her - Alisdair Teague O'Donnabháin. “Livinia Rose Everleigh, will you be my wife? Tomorrow morning, Rose – first thing. I can have the papers drawn up before noon.” Rose looked up at him in a happy daze, and said “I will.” He was overcome at that moment by a mix of emotions and desires that washed over him in hot waves, and he lifted her up in his arms and carried her over to the cot.

They stood beside it, and he held his arms out by his side to let her undress him. She pulled his suspenders down over his shoulders, and unbuttoned his shirt further down and pulled it from the waist of his pants. She moved even closer to him, and her fingers played around the collar of his undershirt and to his surprise she took it in her teeth and started a rip that she continued to tear at roughly until the shirt fell at his feet. His breath hissed in between his clenched teeth - he wanted her so badly, but held himself steady as she trailed her fingernails lightly through the fur of his chest and down his belly trailing down to his trousers. She unbuckled his belt, and leaned into him running her tongue up his breastbone in a burning trail that he felt down to the roots of his heart. She unlaced his trousers and as if in a curtsey bent low with them leaving them at his feet. As she rose back up, she caught the bottom of the dress in her hands, and in a single motion, pulled it over her head and dropped it, letting it float down onto the cot. Martin looked at her, his heart hammering in his chest. Her skin was glowing in the moonlight, pale save for the shadows of hair at her armpits and at the base of her belly. She took his hand, and kissed it while meeting his eyes, and then held his hand to her own face. “Touch me” she said in a breathy voice, and he was on her like an animal.

Martin grabbed her around the waist roughly, his breath coming now in near low-growls. Her eyes were so alive and pulling him in, closer. He took her mouth with his, grinding into her, his tongue going as far in as he could get it. She was sucking at his kiss, returning it with a fervor that she had not shown until now. He could taste the whiskey and Sanjica on her tongue and something else, something sweet and undefined that he knew he would never in his lifetime get enough of. He was hard against her belly, pulsing against her as he led her down onto the cot. He started at her neck, his kisses becoming sharp with teeth and she gasped riding at the edge of pain and desire. Further down he trailed, pulling her skin into his mouth sucking at her biting down hard on her nipples. She arched up into him, offering her body up as she whispered ‘harder, harder, harder…’ He tasted blood in his mouth, her blood, and he worked his way down over her belly, rimming her navel with the tip of his tongue. Her hands were in his hair, tangling and pulling as she pushed his head down lower, parting her legs for him. He smiled, and went lower tonguing and biting at her thighs and he felt her pulling his head back up. ‘Please, please, please’ she said over and over – her hips already moving in anticipation.

He slowed deliberately, licking his way slowly up, barely brushing the dark curls of her hair between her legs, teasing her. He pulled one of her lips into his mouth gently, slowly sucking and then the other until she was panting. He could see her, open and wet – an invitation that made him harder than he possibly thought he could be. He pulled her legs open wider and took her roughly into his mouth sucking her in and then working the flat of his tongue up and down and up and then down further, sinking his tongue into her as deeply as he dared catching the taste of her in his mouth, the same sweet taste of her mouth mixed with a deeper more complex distinctly female taste.

His mind exploded with sensation and images as he fucked her with his tongue, in and out at first lightly – her hips matching his rhythm and then he grabbed her hips to hold her still as he went at her harder until her breath was ragged sobs. He stopped, pulling back from her – the taste of her a wet shine on his lips and chin. He drew himself up, covering her with the whole of himself and kissed her deeply, his own hips beginning to move rubbing the length of him against her belly. She was pulling him up(?) and he let her, not quite sure what she was intending. He let her guide him up and up until his cock reached her lips.

She licked the underside of his tip, and when she opened her mouth, he grabbed the back of her head to angle it just right, and then drove himself deep into her mouth stroking roughly in and out angling her head until he reached her throat. She had her hands on his hips and she pulled him in further, and he felt the tip of himself work its way into her throat. He was so near to spending, but it felt so good – he pushed forward a bit more and he felt her convulse in a gag even as she pulled him deeper in. The sounds she was making were bringing him to the edge quickly, and he pulled out lightheaded, trembling and breathing deeply.

He inched himself back down and then in a single motion, flipped her over while he flipped under her laying her on top of him. She kissed him deeply, bringing her thighs up to straddle him. She sat up and rubbed the hot wetness of herself up and down his cock, moaning lightly. Her hips were moving with a liquid ease, up and down and when her thighs began trembling, he held her hips stopping her. He sat up, and arranged the pillows behind his back, and then turned her around so that she was straddling him the other way. Her ass was a picture of perfection – small rounded curves split into a heart shape with small dimples in her lower back just above them. Her hands reached down between her legs, and she took his cock in her hands working them up and down. He reached around and grabbed her by her wrists, bringing her hands up and around his neck. She was stretched out and open on top of him, the moonlight reflecting off her pale skin.

He commanded her to not move her hands and then brought his own hands up her belly and to her breasts, and began rolling the nipples around in his fingers – just hard enough to get her moving on top of him. ‘Please, Teague – harder, please please please, make it hurt’. He felt something come roaring alive inside of him, completely alive and he wrenched and pulled at her skin until she cried out and kept going harder until her cries were edging toward small screams. He bit at her shoulders and brought his hands down lower, pulling her legs open further, parting her. He dipped his fingers into the wet of her, and drew his wet fingertips up and worked rough circles into her nub, pulling the small hood back exposing it fully and he circled around and over it. His other fingers he worked shallowly in and out of her, the sucking wet sounds nearly driving him over the edge. Her smell was everywhere, all over him and he felt himself trembling as he forced his hips to stay still. He began to rub her harder up and down, using on her the same rhythm he used on himself – faster, harder – her head was back on his shoulder and her own hands had found her nipples and she was pulling at them. Her teeth were bared, and her breath hissed in and out through them as she bucked her hips under his touch.

Martin decided at that moment that he was going to take her, now – he didn’t care about the ritual, the Outsider, none of that. He needed to take her over the edge, and by the gods he needed to be inside of her. “Rose, I want you – I want you right now – I don’t care anymore about the ritual, I want you, I want to fuck you right now, Rose, Rose, Rose’. “Yes, yes.. yessss…” she whispered in return and he kept his rhythm on her as nestled the tip of him into the wet edge of her, pushing himself in slightly, gently in and out, in and out. He felt her trembling, and her body was pulling itself in from the center as she reached the edge. Her legs were trying to close, and he held them open roughly with his legs and his other hand, keeping his fingertips in a tight hard circle on her. Her breaths were coming faster, deeper.. ‘ahhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhh, ahhhhh Teague, Teague, ahhhhhh, ahhhhh – her body nearly jackknifed when she spent, and with the first hard clench he felt from inside of her he pulled her down firmly onto him. He felt her stretch inside, meeting a tight resistance at first and then suddenly it gave way and she cried out in pain. The smell of her blood mixed with the smell of her body tore into his senses, and he plunged hard all the way inside of her as she pulsed and clenched hard around him all the way down. He held her still, not wanting to spend – not yet, not yet. He held her still on him, their bodies locked tightly together until her pulsing stopped and until his own crest subsided. They whispered in trembling voices to each other over and over _iloveyou iloveyou iloveyou iloveyou_. 

He pulled her gently off of him, his heart making a hard thump seeing the threads of her blood on him. He shifted and laid her down, and leaned over her looking into her eyes and smiling. She was smiling back at him, and when he asked her if she was ok she nodded and pulled his mouth to hers kissing him softly. He began kissing his way down, kissing the marks on her made by his teeth trailing his lips down her belly and parted her legs. There was not as much blood as he would have expected, but he could see small ragged tears where the smooth taut barrier of skin had been. He brought his mouth to her again, this time sucking at her gently working a finger into her. He continued to suck and lick at her gently, and he could feel her body jerking in small sensitive aftershocks from her spending.

He worked two fingers in, a tight fit and then three and began working them slowly in and out and then a little harder as he increased the pressure of his mouth on her. She moaned softly at first, and then her breathing began to pick up as he increased the speed of his fingers in her. He stroked her deep, and then shallowly - angling his fingers slightly up to match the spot on the inside where his tongue was working on the outside. He pressed his fingers up and his tongue down and began moving his tongue and fingers in tandem. He could tell that she was sore, but as he picked up his speed and pressure he could feel her trembling and tightening in small waves around his fingers. He kept going and when her hands found their way to the back of his head, he picked up the pressure. Her breathing became shallow, and she tightened and relaxed, tightened and relaxed.

He could sense that something was keeping her from cresting again and he stopped to ask her if she was ok – and she blushed deeply and said that she felt a strange pressure from inside, and was afraid that if she kept going she might… she stopped, blushing even more deeply and Martin smiled. He had heard of this sort of thing, and told her that she wouldn’t. He told her that there were many ways of spending, each with its own unique sensation. This one, he told her would come from inside of her and would feel deeper – more intense. “Let it happen, Rose. Its ok.” She nodded, smiling with the tip of her tongue just touching her top teeth and then caught her bottom lip in her mouth, throwing her head back when Martin lowered his mouth onto her again.

He started again slowly, and carried her to the edge and back again and again until she felt swollen inside around his fingers and she began to beg him to finish her ‘please, please, uhhhnnnn, please….’ He slipped in a fourth finger, taking a delight in the small grunting moan she made as he worked them into her tightness. With his other hand, he pushed slightly up on the top of her until her small nub popped out of its hood, a small pearly pink tip that he took into his mouth, sucking it until it swelled and grew more and then began rough strong licks up and down as he worked his fingers in and out. The sounds of his fingers in her became very wet as he worked them in and out. Her breathing became shallow, and her fingers gripped the blankets on the cot hard. Her hips bucked under him, and she began to fuck his fingers hard slamming her hips down on him. He fucked her back hard with his fingers, and when he felt around his fingers the first ripples moving through her he brought his mouth back down and brought her over the crest. She slammed down around his fingers in a deep muscular contraction, and he drew his fingers out quickly and watched as she spent deeply and wetly, pulsing and clenching wildly inside and a small hot spurt shot from her and caught him directly in the face. He had never seen such a thing – it took him to an edge of himself that was pure animal. He pulled himself up over her and looked down into her face. She looked back at him in wide-eyed wonder, her body shivering with the aftershocks.

He wrapped his arms around her and flipped her up on top of him, taking her by the hips and sinking himself all the way inside of her in one hard smooth thrust. He could feel her still pulsing lightly inside, and took her hips and moved her up and down. “Fuck me, Rose. Hard.” Her eyes seemed to sharpen, and she stroked up and down him a few times slowly and then lowered her face to his, sucking at his bottom lip. To his surprise, and shock she bit down hard on his lip and when she drew back and smiled, his blood was on her teeth. He was not accustomed to being on the receiving end of pain, and never in this context, but he found that he liked it very much. He curled his lip, lightly growling and pulled her hard down on him as he thrust up into her. She matched his thrust, and then began riding him hard, deep long strokes, faster. “Yes, fuck me. Fuck me, Rose.”

His whole body began trembling, and he felt the first electric chills running up and down his legs. They spread to his entire body, his skin coming alive in a way he had never experienced. His body was full of chills, head to toe and he felt his legs stiffening straight out and his toes curling down. He clenched his jaw, as he rode the edge drawing it out as long as he could.

He could feel something pulling at him inside, pulling through him like small wires through the meat of his brain and his being, stripping through his very soul and gathering to a point in his middle. His arms were shaking now, and his teeth ground together almost painfully under the tension this energy was sending through him in waves. His eyes were screwed shut and his face a tight knot of tension. The first hot impulse came deep from his groin, building and building into a nearly unbearable pressure as he slammed into her deeper and deeper – her rhythm was perfect, and she kept him trapped in this intense electric moment just seconds from release. He felt something inside of himself uncoil from his middle, breaking away from him and joining the surging pressure deep inside of him.

He opened his eyes, and looked at her. She was groaning now, her thighs trembling and her fingers working herself hard between her legs. When she spent, she pulsed around him hard like a tight wet fist and he crested, up and up and his entire body clenched from the force of the release inside her. For a single insane second he thought he had burst open inside of her and looked down wildly expecting to see blood gushing from the place where their bodies met but saw only the milky-clear thick mix of the fluids of them both - he kept exploding inside of her over and over, his body caught in a loop of crests and purges. From somewhere far away he heard himself screaming as he looked up at her framed in the moonlight. _Her eyes were completely black!_ The air went dead and heavy – choking him with the smell of sterile dust and dead copper, and the sky ripped itself apart above Rose opening to nightmare swaths of violet, twilight and black. She kept riding him hard and as his sensitivity tipped into pain, she opened her mouth and her voice pitched into a hellish keening wail that rose higher and higher into the Void sending up her call. “No, no nononono NO!” he croaked in a hoarse dry whisper - He was pinned under Rose, unable to move, and could only watch helplessly as the Outsider approached from above.


	13. Day 6, Part 4: The Summoning

He could see The Outsider approaching over her shoulder walking straight down toward them from above – somehow _facing them_ at an impossible angle while he walked, a vague outline of a young man with just a hint of a face and black smudges for eyes. The image of the Outsider shifted and shimmered, going in and out of focus, and Martin’s mind tipped into helpless confusion unable to comprehend the Thing revealed behind its avatar with each shift. The Thing was enormous, larger than the sky and yet fit neatly into this template of the human form of a young man. The Outsider stood at the foot of the cot, and reached Its thin pale hands out and laid them on Rose’s shoulders and then slid them down her chest. She moaned as It toyed with her nipples and he could feel her clenching inside, shuddering with deep pleasure. The Outsider dipped Its body down for a moment in a crouch, and he felt It enter Rose – impossibly big, sliding up against his cock separated only by the thin skin between her openings. It was bent over her back, whispering in her ear, one hand at her throat and the other working down between her legs stroking her as she slid up and down the lengths of them both now. The image of the Outsider shifted and slid to an angle just out of reality and for a moment Martin saw the Thing clearly. It had dozens, no _hundreds_ of small thin-tipped tentacled arms – and now _thousands_ of small tendrils erupting from it, writhing wetly over her body trailing Its slime – dipping into her mouth, tangling in her hair, entering her nostrils as she sighed under Its touch. The tendrils lengthened and encircled her nipples and a tight knot of them concentrated between her legs, writhing and vibrating wetly against her like a nest of small black eels.

Martin was shuddering with the sensations They were forcing throughout him, and he could feel her body clenching and pulling hard on his cock like a hungry sucking mouth. The Thing was plunging into her hard, guiding her body up and down Martin’s cock stroking him in time with Its own rhythm. Martin felt her inside of him – no longer Rose, but someone… some _thing_ else. She crept toward the edge of his soul, teasing, touching, and She entered him roughly at a point deep in the warm folds of the base of his brain. She sent herself throughout him, filling him, tearing at his insides – vines thick with sap and thorns growing and twisting inside of him, black blooms bursting open painfully and spreading themselves deeper inside of him. He sensed that She was coming to take the only thing inside of himself that he wanted desperately to hold on to. He tried to fight Her off, but She broke easily through his defenses, piercing the walls of his heart where he kept it, his love, his Rose – She curled a fat pulsing vine into the chambers of his heart and with a strangling snap shattered the bond, and Rose, his Rose, was lost to him forever.

He felt a phantom tongue – Hers, teasing at the hole it had left behind in his heart, tasting his pain, savoring it, sucking it hard, stroking… Martin felt himself on the edge again, this time from the very surface of his skin down – She was pulling the pieces of the bond from him, down to its very dust - carrying it along the black-thorned tendrils, stripping him from the inside out. She pulled Herself roughly through him, travelling throughout his blood like thousands of live electric filaments, hissing and spitting and firing every nerve in his body as She pulled him inward from the bottom of his soul. He tensed, shuddered and then exploded inside of her – the bond stripping from him like shrapnel and barbed wire through his painfully swollen cock. She rode him harder, taking more and more and more from him. He spent over and over, his eyes rolling back in his head, and the pain sent him deep into a quiet place in his brain. Through a daze of semi-consciousness, he looked up into the stuff of his own mind and saw stars, galaxies behind his eyes – wide swaths of a black forever, detritus of the past stretching backward through time and the fetal softness of the future yet born stretching endlessly into some dark beyond.

From where he cowered in his mind, he could hear his body screaming faintly through the walls of his skull, barely audible over the hissing and clicking of arcane words traded between the reunited Lovers as they copulated through the altar of his body. Through the firm strokes of Her grasping cunt he could feel the Thing pulsing and thumping inside of her against his cock like an obscene heart as It approached Its climax. The Thing shuddered and burst inside of Her, filling Her with endless waves of thick black fluid – the very stuff of the Void itself - a thick pulsing that Martin could feel surging inside of himself as well. Their buzzing and clicking and hissing began to coalesce with Martin’s hoarse screams into a single damnable sound rising and rising and when She began slamming down hard on the both of them to draw out their final spurts, their sounds reached an equal pitch – the three of them reaching a perfect tonal harmony.

Martin looked into the Void – the eternity that lay open above him, an endless swath of violet and black, a twilight sky devoid of stars, their sounds - their insane singing a kaleidoscope of impossible shapes dancing in front of his eyes – sigils, bits of random memory. He smelled the black roses in the air, wet and heavy and the sweet heady contrast of the lily. He smelled himself, Her – rain, rivers, mud, copper, icy sterile dust, pollen, freshly turned earth – his mind was spun and turned over inside itself as the pitch of sound tore through every particle of his being.

With a shudder, the three came to a stop. There was dead silence, an absence of all sound, and Martin could see everything in front of him, below him, all around him in all directions with a painful intensity – the very motes of dust in the air, barely moving, the twinkling of the colored lights scattered throughout the dark Dunwall streets like jewels, their festive glow a sharp contrast against the backdrop of the endless Void above him. The Thing, this Man shape – The Outsider, drew his arms down around Her neck in a loose embrace, and She reached up to loop her own arms around Its neck, their embrace the figure eight, the eighth eternal.

The Man shape, the avatar - shifted out of register, and Martin saw again the vast Thing that lay sleeping behind the black eyes of the Outsider. Its thousands of tendriled arms slithered around Her, enveloped Her in the damp black flesh of Itself. She opened Her eyes and looked down at Martin. Her eyes bulged further out of their sockets now, swollen and shiny black. The left eye suddenly ruptured wetly, and then the right eye burst open, weeping streams of black fluid down her pale cheeks. Bubbles of liquid black welled out of her nostrils and ran in thick runlets over Her swollen lips. She opened her mouth as if to speak, and the black fluid filled her open mouth, and poured thickly from it. It flowed out of Her ears, Her ass, Her cunt – pulsing out of Her in thick shiny waves.

A small burning hole appeared on one of Her cheeks, smoking and smoldering and another appeared in the twisting and shifting abomination of the Thing’s face amongst the many eyes and holes and waving tendrils of flesh. Like a burning silvergraph film, the reality of them shrank rapidly from the centers of the burn points, forming wide thin transparent areas across the surfaces of Them that stretched and tore Their skin into black-rimmed holes, the burns melting Their skins away into black motes and then finally the last of Them shrank down to small black tatters that turned into tendrils of black smoke and floating ash, and then into nothing as the Void began to close in on itself.

They released him as the splayed-open Void closed itself and faded from his vision, and his mind fell heavily back into place. The purple and black of the night sky snapped back into a sea of fast-moving clouds lit from within by the brightness of the moon, and the dead copper heaviness of the air lifted. Martin sat up and looked wildly around, disoriented by his sudden return to consciousness. He was afraid to look down at himself, at the carnage that had been wreaked on his body but when he did he saw nothing. No blood, no fluids, no red, no black, no pain, nothing. Rose was gone. Whatever demon had ridden and used her body had taken it back to the Void. He reached inside of himself to see what he could find left of her there, but found nothing. His heart, purged of the bond, felt clean and empty, and his mind sharp. He swung his legs around to the side of the cot, looked down and saw at his feet the white gown Rose was meant to wear as his bride. He picked it up, held it to his face and inhaled deeply of her, and felt nothing.


	14. Day 7, The Fugue Feast approaches

Martin woke early, and rose as he generally did on any given day – however, he did not shower, nor did he put on fresh clothing. He slipped the clothes on from the previous night, the smell of Rose’s perfume still strong in his rumpled clothes. He ran his hands through his hair, and left his face unshaven. He had some errands to run today, and it would not do to be recognized. He rifled through his closet until he found his old peaky cap and then pulled it down low over his brow. He stood with his hand at his roughly stubbled chin for a moment after pulling on his boots, forming a plan for the day. There was much to do, and he didn’t want to waste a great deal of time. He started with his collection of black magic artifacts, dragging out an old steamer trunk from his spare room and filling it with the various items before locking it. Once he had those things together, he created a pile on his bed for those items specifically related to the ritual. He narrowed his eyes, the sting of his own ridiculousness coming ‘round full circle from hindsight as the pile grew.

He wanted to break these meaningless ridiculous things – candles, instruments, chalk, all of it bullshit. He knew now that there was no such thing as a god at the whim of man, no spell, incantation or ritual sacrifice would ever change that. No, They – the entities, whatever They were – gave and took at will, completely indifferent to the whims and needs of any man. Any particular action that seemed to reflect the interest or favour of a god was just an illusion, a cruel unpredictable indifference that nurtured only false hope and wishful thinking. Martin roughly pushed the pile together and then got an idea about what he would do with it. Some of it, anyway. He stopped what he was doing, and grabbed his bag and headed to the Office of High Overseer.

As Martin was walking up Clavering, he saw the flower stand but did not see the strange man. There was an old woman there now, her eyes bright and flinty in a face shriveled into itself like a dried Morley apple. The flowers had clearly been picked over, and those left looked tired and spent. Gone were the lush bunches of dripping wet blooms and other colorful exotic flora. He wasn’t sure why, but he needed to know what happened to that man. He walked up to the stand, and waved away the old woman’s friendly sales pitch. He asked her where the man was who had been working at the stand. The woman looked at him as if he were daft and said in a thick ‘Wilds accent “Thaur is nae dyn workin' haur sairrr.” Martin asked her if she was certain that there hadn’t been a man working this stand, and attempted to describe him but found that his mind was unable to grasp a description, bending around every attempt to see that man’s strange smile again in his mind’s eye. The woman spoke again, “I've bin haur aw week, jist me.” She didn’t seem as friendly now, her glinty eyes beginning a hint of a glare. Martin tipped his cap and apologized in the most charming voice he could muster, and thankfully her face softened a bit. The last thing he needed was someone shouting for the City Watch. Martin walked on, unsure what to make of it. Perhaps the woman was the man’s mother, gone a bit soft in the head left to sell the dregs?

Martin reached Holger Square and rushed across the quiet courtyard. There didn’t seem to be anyone around but the day before the Fugue Feast, that wasn’t unusual. Most Overseers got an early start. The front doors were unlocked, and Martin walked in looking around to see who was there. Brother Juibal was not there, which was surprising. Martin wouldn’t have expected him to be away from his desk, even the day before the Fugue Feast. He leaned out slightly and looked down the hall toward Campbell’s office. The door was open, but he didn’t hear anyone in there. Martin ignored his desk, and only stopped briefly at the holding cell to make sure there was nothing left of Rose in there. He headed up to the Archive, looking carefully to make sure no one was in there. He made his way up to the alcove where Keziah Everleigh’s file was. He found it quickly, and put it in his bag and headed next to the evidence room. There was a variety of objects there, but none that Martin could pinpoint as belonging to either Everleigh woman. He hadn’t intended to, but his curiosity got the better of him and he decided to look in on the Interrogation room. He walked in and saw Campbell and Brother Lambert in there, walking the perimeter of the room looking for something. They both straightened quickly when Martin walked in, both clearly surprised to see him.

“Ah, Brother Martin,” said Campbell. “Come to see the aftermath? Sorry to say the boys they brought over from Coldridge left you little to look at, thankfully. We were making certain, however – given the circumstances.” Martin was surprised at how thoroughly the room had been scrubbed. He could not blame either Overseer for checking every crack for whatever may have been left behind of that _thing_. He pretended to help them look for a few minutes, keeping their attention on anything other than the bag he was carrying. As they were finishing up the perimeter search, Martin tipped his cap, nodded and bade them goodbye until the new year and to enjoy the Fugue Feast. Campbell returned a chilly smile, and laid a hand on Brother Lambert’s shoulder and assured Martin that the Fugue Feast was sure to be … _entertaining_. Something in Campbell’s eyes suggested that this Fugue Feast might run a little long this year. No wonder the Interrogation room had been unbooked. Martin shuddered. He did not want think on the implications of the unspoken words he had just heard.

Martin hurried on out of the Office of the High Overseer, and back to the Old Port District. He had what he needed and was anxious to have everything ready before the day ran too long. Up in his bedroom, he picked through the items on his bed choosing the bonecharm, Rose’s diary, her file and her mother’s file. These he arranged in a neat stack, and laid the blasphemous ritual book on top. He carefully wrapped the stack in a cross-twine and knotted it and then rooted around for a suitable box. He had an old wooden box that was just the size he needed. He laid the items inside, and then fixed the lid firmly down with small nails and his tackhammer. Now he needed only find a decent courier. Or, perhaps he would deliver it personally. Yes, he decided that he would.

Martin looked around his apartment again, tallying up in his mind what he would take care of when he got back. He would purge his apartment of Rose’s belongings, but not until after midnight. He had plenty of cleaning up to do before then, and he felt at peace with a mind full of tasks to a common end: to separate the wheat from the chaff, and burn the corruption from his life and from his mind and move forward. His entire life had been a series of winnowing, separating, burning and rebirth – an endless wheel turning, rendering the leavings into ever greater things for his next steps. Satisfied with his plan, he closed and locked his door and headed back out into the streets, careful to take the darker paths and the back alleys. Where he was going, he most certainly wanted to keep out of common sight.

He walked for a good quarter-hour until he reached the seedy street with the rows of boarded up buildings. The cobblestones were loosened here and there, leaving small black pits in the unused street. Martin walked carefully, keeping his head down and his eyes wary. He was getting close to his destination now, and ever cautious. This was Whaler territory, and Daud’s Whalers guarded it with lethal efficiency. He glanced up at the rooftops from the periphery of his vision catching a shadow here and there flitting just out of sight. Martin stood across from the old building, and began whistling a particular melody – the sound carrying along the quiet of the street. It was a song that Martin had known as a boy, and over the years had used it exclusively as a signal when working with Daud. Sure enough, within minutes a blue-jacket appeared from seemingly nowhere. It was the same dark-skinned young girl who had brought him the book. She led him into the building and if she recognized him, she didn’t mention it. She was distracted and irritable, clearly not in a talkative mood and she left him at the bottom of the stairwell while she moved like a shadow up and out of Martin’s sight.

She appeared again a few minutes later, somehow having made her way _behind_ him and walked him up the stairs to the top floor where Daud’s room was. She motioned for him to go in and then turned abruptly away, disappearing from sight. Martin was impressed. This young girl moved with a dexterity and skill that was far beyond her years. Martin tapped on the door lightly, and then let himself in Daud’s room. The first thing to hit him was the smell. The room reeked of chloroform, a sweet heady sickening odor. What in the world? “Hitting the ether, Daud? You hardly seem the type,” Martin joked, but he really couldn’t imagine what the hell Daud would be doing with _chloroform_. He didn’t really _want_ to imagine it given the various uses it was known to have.

Daud was in a particularly foul mood, distracted and irritable and in no mood for joking around. He asked what Martin wanted, and Martin hesitated only for a second before shooting Daud an oily smile, and telling him that he just happened to be in the neighborhood to deliver a package. Daud was too distracted to pay much attention and largely ignored Martin. Daud took his jacket off of the drying rack in the corner of the room, smelled it and then shook it out while swearing lightly under his breath. When he shook the jacket, the cloying smell of the chloroform intensified considerably. Daud opened his Whaler trunk, rooted around for something and evidently didn’t find it. “Martin, will you excuse me – I’ll be right back.”

Daud left the room, closing the door behind him but leaving the Whaler trunk open. Martin looked carefully around the room to make sure there were no peepholes or avenues of being spied on. Satisfied, he worked quickly. He could not believe his luck. Martin quickly worked the box he was carrying under the items in the trunk and carefully arranged them back. Unless Daud was looking specifically for this box, he’d never notice it. Martin went and sat back down. He wasn’t worried. The blue-jacket who walked him in, and Daud himself hadn't noticed he was even carrying a box.

When Daud got back, he was carrying a small tin of some kind of powder and then reached into the Whaler trunk for a sturdy scrub brush. He and Martin talked idly for a little while Daud brushed his jacket down with the powder, and the smell of the chloroform began to disperse. When Daud was satisfied enough to finish, he asked Martin again why he had stopped by. Martin just smiled and said that he had just been passing through, and then bade Daud a goodbye and to enjoy the Fugue Feast. Daud did not look amused, but returned his goodbye. The blue-jacket appeared by Martin’s side again. Martin wondered how it was that this girl just seemed to always be in the right place at the right time? He added her efficiency to her list of skills. Seems Daud had found a halfway decent apprentice for a change. Daud nodded slightly to the young dark-skinned girl and she nodded back and without a word walked Martin down to the street. Martin opened his mouth to say something to the girl, to compliment her - but she beat him to the punch with a “fuck off” and then disappeared as if by magic.

Martin walked away from this dingy side-street as cautiously as he walked into it and his step picked up considerably when he no longer caught the flitting shadows crisscrossing between the rooftops. He cut up the street that connected the Old Port District with that of Daud’s territory and then made his way back up to his apartment. He was eager to get started in his process of burning away yet another cycle of his life, and spinning the wheel to begin the next. As for Daud, well… Martin decided to play the long game on this particular situation. Martin had no doubt that Daud knew exactly what he was doing when he delivered Martin the book and he felt, no _knew_ that the note about the eighth stricture was a clear message to Martin. Martin fully intended to return the message one day, years after Daud had forgotten all about it. All it would take was the right word in the right ear at the right time, and the Whalers would be washed away in a fiery surge. Nothing would stop the Overseers from taking Daud down if, _when_ they found the evidence of his attempt on High Overseer Campbell’s life – and using a demon at that! Martin intended to dance close to that fire when it happened. Close indeed.

Martin got back to his apartment, and let himself in and got busy with the mundane tasks of cleaning up. He spent hours as night fell, cleaning, scrubbing – eventually stripping down to his trousers as he worked furiously, sweating and reciting the strictures over and over in his mind to keep his mind moving in its machinelike precision. He gathered all of Rose’s things and put them into a box. Later, he would go up on the roof and clean up there but for now, it was time for a drink. Perhaps three. Or ten.

**************

Martin woke with a start and sat up, disoriented and still quite drunk. He had been laying across his bed, and hadn’t even been aware that he had passed out. He fumbled to his dresser, and looked at his pocketwatch. It was not quite eleven o’clock at night, and he sighed. He had gotten it in his mind earlier that he would take a walk in the early hours of the Fugue Feast, perhaps walk over to the Golden Cat and see if a certain Miss Betty Riley was available. There was much he felt like doing, and she seemed just the girl to cater to his specific needs. He was in the mood to explore the more painful aspects of intercourse, and since she was evidently well-practiced… 

Martin stretched and wobbled up. His pants were unlaced, and he had taken his boots off. Where the fuck were they? He decided he didn’t care. He didn’t need a shirt _or_ boots to clean up the rooftop. This would keep him busy for a while, until it was safe to unleash his rage in the safety of the Fugue Feast. He made it as far as the kitchenette before deciding to top himself off with a little more liquor and perhaps grab a smoke on the small balcony. He was nursing the dregs of his drink and smoking when he heard a noise coming from the rooftop above. He froze, not moving. **Shit! _Fuck!_ ** Daud must have found the box! Martin forced himself to slow his breathing and calmly finished his drink and his cigarette, listening carefully at the light footsteps shuffling up above. He ducked back inside and locked his window, and then went to his bedroom and fetched his old service revolver from the small nightstand beside his bed. He loaded it, and readied himself. Looked like his Fugue Feast was going to have a very interesting start indeed. He knew that it wasn’t likely Daud up there – the steps were too light, and the step length sounded shorter - female, and he found himself hoping that Daud had sent that sullen little dark-skinned blue-jacket after him. He’d put a bullet in some part of her, enough to slow her down – and when he was done with her - _thoroughly_ done with her, he’d put a bullet in her head – if she was still alive, that is. Martin smiled grimly as he made his way slowly and quietly up the landings to the rooftop.

He opened the roof service door slowly, carefully – listening for whomever was up there. He didn’t see anyone from where he was peering out, and stepped out thumbing the hammer of his revolver to full cock. He heard a scuffling from behind the open door and Martin stepped around the door only to see Rose sitting there on the cot, her hair matted and tangled, shivering in the dirty white gown.


	15. The Fugue Feast

Martin lowered his revolver, carefully decocking it. “I nearly killed you, girl.” Martin walked over to Rose and tipped her chin up, meeting her eyes and looking for any signs of black in them. Seeing none, he gave her his hand and pulled her to her feet. She looked like she had been dragged through dirt and smelled like an open sewer. Her hair was ratty and clumped, and she stood quietly in front of Martin saying nothing. He wondered if her bond had broken as well, and from her quiet inaction it seemed to have. Without the bond, the situation was dangerous. She knew everything, and there was nothing stopping her from reporting everything she knew. It wasn’t likely she would be believed, but Martin wasn’t sure he could take such a chance. Too risky. The Fugue Feast was upon them now, and this gave him time to figure out what he would do. For now, he gestured to the open door of the roof service entrance and guided her inside.

When they got to Martin’s rooms, she entered without resistance – walking as if in a daze. He intended to question her thoroughly, but not until she was cleaned up some. He would not be able to bear the smell coming from her, and for that matter from himself. He drew them a hot bath using a liberal amount of bath salts and walked over to undress her. She looked up at him, her eyes full of confusion and sadness as he pulled the gown up over her head. The sight of her body, just the night before having driven him nearly wild with desire did little more now than fill him with a strange distant sort of pity. Her knees were dirty, her feet filthy.

He felt the loss of the bond inside of him keenly, and could see in her eyes that she did as well. He stood back and asked her to undress him, and she did so – carefully unlacing his trousers the rest of the way and drawing them down to his feet. He stepped out of them, took her hand and led her to the bath. They sank into the hot water, and she leaned back against him as he washed her hair and body, and then his own. He sat with her for a while, both lost in their thoughts until the water began to turn tepid and he led her out and helped her dry off. They stood naked together in his bedroom, and he found that even after all that had happened, he still wished to possess her. There was still something there, something so far down inside himself that he had nearly missed its presence. It was not the same rabid desire that had driven him helplessly, but it was some desire nonetheless.

Martin tipped her chin up, and lowered his mouth to hers kissing her lightly at first slowly working his mouth into hers. At first, there was no reaction outside of the mechanical movements of an indifferent kiss but when her lips parted and they tasted the insides of each other’s mouth, a slow burn began between them. He felt her hands on his waist as she drew them up and then around, her fingertips running lightly across his back, drawing him closer to her. She felt warm now, and her breathing more natural. He was gentle as he ran his hands around her body, lingering on the various curves taking his time to reach her more sensitive parts. It was slow, and required a good deal of building up between them.

Was this what it was, what it would have been without the bond? They kissed for a while more, and Martin felt his blood quickening, his desire building further and he reached down and lifted her off of her feet and carried her to the bed, laying her down gently. She lay under him, quiet – her eyes searching his, more question than invitation. Martin lowered himself onto her, his mouth lightly touching her under her earlobes, down her throat, his lips lighting on her closed eyelids and he worked his way down her body, taking her skin into his mouth gently now – sucking lightly on her bitten and bruised skin. She sighed under his touch, trembling lightly but she was not pulling him to her with the same raw desperate need to fuck like she had the night before.

She opened to him softly now, like a slow bloom and Martin continued to touch and taste her. He kissed down the light trail of hair under her belly, parting her legs and moving himself lower. He was relieved that his desire remained intact – he was afraid that the breaking of the bond would return him to his mild revulsion with this particular act but it did not seem to have affected him in that way. He was gentle, taking care with her sucking her gently into his mouth. He worked his hands up her thighs, and touched the light wetness of her and slowly pushed his finger into her. His finger met an unexpected resistance, but he kept his rhythm with his mouth to bely his confusion. He paused to look down at her, at his finger at the opening of her and to his astonishment found her fully intact. What?! How? _How was this possible?_ He had torn her open, and further opened her with his fingers. He had felt her tightly around him, all the way inside of her as far as he could go. He had spent inside of her more deeply than he ever had with another person. He had seen the blood, smelled it. Tasted it. What had happened? She did not seem to be aware that she was intact again. Why would the demons return her from the Void this way? Martin drew himself back up, kissing his way back up her body. He worked one arm behind her head, and kept his other hand on her belly. Time for some questions and answers. He took an evasive path of questioning, deliberately vague as to measure her memory of the previous night.

“Rose, what happened last night on the roof? Do you remember? Tell me what you remember, what you felt. All of it. Don’t leave anything out.” She looked up at him, drawing her hand to her face and caressed his cheek as she began to talk.

****

******* Rose Remembers *******

We were up on the rooftop, and we danced and you asked me to marry you. I said yes. I can think of no time I have ever been so sure of an answer. I undressed you, and then myself and then we touched. You took me with your mouth, and I took you with mine. All I could think about was you, you being inside of me. You held me to you, your hands on me and you told me that you did not care about the ritual or the Outsider – that you wanted only me. I knew then that you loved me, Teague. Really loved me. You touched me, and held my legs open and I felt… something. It was a building up, like a sneeze – it was strong, intense and I almost couldn’t stand it but it reached a sharp point and it felt like a kind of burning – not hot in that sense, but some sort of sensation that was as intense as a burn and I could feel that part of me, that part of me that you touch – it felt like it was trying to turn itself inside out in waves. It felt like thumping, or some pulse from inside of me and then I felt you pulling me down onto you. You were right Teague – you said to me that if I had spent before, I would have known it. I know it now. You were right about another thing as well - when you took me, it did hurt but I liked it. I felt myself tearing inside, but all I wanted was for you to tear me further. You filled me inside, I felt like every inch of me inside was filled with you. It was painful – like there was not enough room inside of me for you, but I felt nothing but love and we said it to each other, over and over as you held me. You stopped, and you took me with your mouth again and your fingers. I was so sensitive that I was almost in pain, but I spent again. You took me then, with me on top of you and it felt so good. I took you inside of me, and I remember spending again and I felt you spend inside of me and then … nothing. Everything went black. I only know that I was in some kind of dark place. I couldn’t see anything, hear anything or feel anything. I felt like I was floating toward … _somewhere_ , someplace that I needed to be. I couldn’t feel you anymore. I was far away from you in some kind of black ocean, and I felt myself getting washed away further and further from you. I wondered if I had died, but I woke up alone on the roof. When you came around the corner pointing a gun at me, I thought perhaps I was dreaming. It wasn’t until after our bath that I was able to accept that I wasn’t. What’s that? Yes, I do feel different. It does feel different between us. I don’t think the bond is there between us anymore. Teague, do you feel anything? That anything is… different? I can feel that there is some kind of fire missing, but other than that know this – I love you. I still wish to marry you. Do you feel the same? Teague?”

****

**************

Martin said nothing, and kissed her as he moved his hand down her body and between her legs. His touch was light, and he looked forward to taking her for the first time again. He drew his fingers over her, up and down and then in circles until her breathing quickened and her hips began to move. He continued to work his fingertips in small circles, increasing his pressure ever so slightly as to keep the rhythm that would send her over the edge. Her knees pulled in together sharply, and her body shuddered from head to toe as he drew it out of her, edging it out for as long as he could. He kissed her deeply as she tipped over the edge and then quickly trailed his tongue down her body to catch the wave again before it receded. He reached his hands under her, grabbing her ass hard and began sucking and licking in wide hard strokes with his tongue as he moved her hips with his hands to match the strokes of his tongue. She was at the edge, not quite there and he kept her at this edge until her body began pulling itself in from the middle. Her stomach was trembling and taut from the pressure her body was exerting to pull itself inward and Martin subtly changed the pressure and carried her over the edge again. This time her breath came out in small shrieking pants as the second time carried her into a sensitivity that was at the edge of unbearable.

He pulled himself up and entered her, the wetness of her allowing him to break her with ease. Again he felt her tear, and she clenched under him her face full of pain and desire. He stroked deep into her, thrusting roughly and he demanded that she open her eyes and look at him. She did, and something in them drove him to fuck her even harder. He braced his upper body over her, and pushing from his knees drove into her harder than he had with any other woman. She opened her legs further to him, the pain not stopping her from pulling him further in. She gasped, _harder… harder… harder_ her fingernails clawing at his sides. He stopped, pulled out suddenly and then flipped her over grabbing her hips and pulling her ass into the air. He shoved her head down and with his other hand on her ass pulled her back onto him and began fucking her hard. He was able to drive deeper into her this way, and with every thrust she begged him for more, _please… please… please…_ He worked his thumb into her ass, and she jumped lightly and he felt her rippling inside around his cock as he worked his thumb in and out of her. She was close, and he knew that he was too. He waited until he felt the first deep contractions within her and when she clamped down hard on him he let go inside of her, slamming into her until the last drop of him pulsed out into her. His heart was racing as he held himself up, and he had to slow his breathing down to overcome the lightheadedness that washed over him. He pulled out, trailing a thick mix of blood and fluid and then flopped heavily down into the bed. Rose nestled her head into the soft inner part of his shoulder, and the two of them fell deeply asleep without a word.

**************

_Martin blinked his eyes hard, looking around. Had he been asleep? Where the hell was he? He was standing at a table, no… a desk of some kind and there was a strategy map there in front of him. He was planning something with... someone. What was it? The map was blurred, and he couldn’t make out any of the notes written on it. He looked up and around the room where he suddenly came to. There was an audiograph machine there on the desk, some books, a bed(?), was he in some sort of hotel? He was alone in the room, and the door was shut. He walked to the door and opened it, and stepped out into a dark alleyway. There was something on the ground, some rags? He walked up to it. It was _her_ , but how did he get to Old Lamprow? He looked around quickly, relaxing when he saw the alleyway was still blocked off. He walked away from the mutilated and beaten body, looking left and right as he exited the alleyway. He looked down to check his uniform, and to his shock saw that he was wearing red – he was wearing the uniform of the High Overseer! Campbell would kill him if caught him. Wait. No, he wasn’t in Dunwall. He wasn’t in Old Lamprow either. He looked around the unfamiliar streets, wondering where the fuck he was. He could have sworn he was in Old Lamprow. He looked behind him to the alleyway but it was gone. When he turned back around, he was standing in front of Daud’s hideout and Daud was leaning on the wall by the front door, his arms crossed over his chest scowling at him. Martin had a story ready about the box, but before he could open his mouth Daud said ‘Remember the eighth stricture’ and his eyes turned black and burst, spilling a thick black fluid down his cheeks. Martin backed away, terrified. Daud was reaching up, his mark flashing and_

Martin woke with a start, sitting straight up and gasping for air as the dream faded quickly. He was disoriented, and it took a few moments before he was able to lay back down again. He looked over at Rose sleeping. She was beautiful, in her own way. He stroked her cheek lightly, trying to recapture that wild desire he had for her in the thick of the bond but was unable. He would have no problem fucking her for a while, but he knew that he could not marry her. Martin had no desire to marry. Not her, not anyone. How would he tell her? What would she do? He considered keeping her here in the apartment, but he knew that would not work for long. He would tire of her – he knew this. The longer he spent with her, the more difficult it would be to extricate himself. The risks were already high. She was in love with him, and Martin knew that a woman in the thick of love held a rare power – the power to build up a man, or to destroy him in equal measures.

Martin had a plan in his mind now, a path to follow and it did not allow for the life that Rose wanted with him. The uniform of the High Overseer had seemed so real in his dream, every thread and nap appearing in pristine detail, every button and buckle polished brightly, high black boots polished to a glassy shine. He knew now that he was destined to wear the Red. Before this moment, it would not have occurred to him to consider it but now… He had no idea how he was going to get there, what path would take him there but he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that it would happen. He saw it as a sign, a reminder of his path. He had been touched by the Void – _violated_ by it, and he would use what he learned of this violation against it and against any demon that slithered freely from it between this world and that. Martin had every intention of facing the Outsider again, and this time he would not only bring him to heel, he would crush him under his own. He felt cold inside. Clean. Empty. He was purged, and he was ready. He had finally found the Outsider, only to end up with his feet on an even firmer foundation as an Overseer. It was a clear sign. High Overseer Martin. He liked the sound of that. As for Daud and his ‘eighth stricture’ – Daud was not a concern for Martin at the moment. Martin had opened a door to the Void, but Daud had given him the key. This was not something he would forget. How many others would receive keys like this? How many doors would be opened? Now that he had seen the Void and its ilk for what it was, he knew that closing the doors would not be enough. Doors could not open without keys. It was nothing personal toward Daud, but from here forward they walked different, wholly incompatible paths. One day he would address it, but that day was not now.

Martin pulled himself up as quietly as possible as to not wake Rose. He needed to be out in the chilled air, to clear his mind. He let himself out onto the small balcony in the kitchenette, lit a cigarette and looked out over the Old Port District. He wasn’t sure what time it was, and there was a comfort in not having to know. The Fugue Feast was upon them now, and time had no real meaning. The sun looked to be at the midmorning point. It was going to be another clear day, it seemed. It was quiet now, but Martin knew that it would not be quiet for long. Music and song would rise from the streets, smells of cooking, roasting and baking would fill the air. The ships gliding by would sound their horns or ring their old brass bells, shouts would drift over the water – all manner of oaths, swears, declarations of love, insults. There would be life lived to the fullest, deaths both expected and unexpected. People would dance in the streets in masks and costumes, drunken, drugged, so alive, and burning bright. Children would be born, children conceived… Martin’s gut went cold at that thought. What if he had gotten Rose pregnant? Technically, it wouldn’t matter if she was or not since it was the Fugue Feast, but the last thing Martin wanted was to live the rest of his life wondering if, when, how this could bring his life crashing down. A child on its own could do plenty of damage to Martin’s plans, but one conceived in the midst of this _blasphemy? _It was unthinkable. This was not a chance he was willing to take with his life, not when he had just set his feet on the clearest path of his life. He finished his cigarette, and lit another his thoughts weighing heavily. He knew what he needed to do. He could hear Rose now puttering around in the kitchenette, and he went back inside.__

____

____

Rose was dressed in just her shift and her undershorts, and was standing at the small table arranging the flowers. She had arranged the black roses around the single lily snugly, and was admiring their beauty. The flowers had shown no sign of wilting, even now. The smell of them seemed to fill the kitchenette, mixing with the various smells of Rose: her perfume, the strawberry-rose scented hair soap, the smell of sex and sweat dried on her skin. She looked up at him, smiling – the crooked points of her eyeteeth poking slightly through her upper lip. She looked beautiful, innocent even now. He would remember her always just like this: smiling at him with hope in her eyes, her hair wild around her face. All that could have been between them he would remember, for the rest of his days. She had touched him, a part of him that no woman ever had nor ever would again. He kept this moment in his heart, locked away from the world. His Rose. His. Always and forever in this moment.

Martin smiled back at her, and took her hands in his. He did care for her, but he could not let this stop him on his path. The Outsider and his whore had taken something from him when they used him, but they in turn left something behind. He now carried a small beacon, an awareness of the Void that he had not possessed before. This beacon would lead him and one day _his_ Overseers against them, and he could not allow anyone or anything to stand in his way. He knew that Rose carried something inside of her as well. If they had taken from him, they had surely taken from her and there was no telling what they left behind inside of her. Martin knew his own heart, but he could never be sure about Rose.

Martin kissed her forehead and told her to get dressed. Once they were both dressed, Martin led her up to the roof, telling her that he wished to propose properly. She was giddy, excited, so full of life and possibilities. They stood together for a moment looking out over the Old Port District, her back to him as he held her in his arms. He smelled her hair, her skin, breathing her in. He let her go, and walked to the edge of the building and turned to look at her. The sun was caught in her hair, sparking around her face and her smile widened when Martin opened his arms to her and said “I love you, Rose.” She ran to him and threw herself into his arms. At the last second, Martin lowered his arms and stepped to one side. He did not watch when she went over the edge, and she did not make a sound as she fell. He hurried away – he did not want to hear her body crack open in the alley. He was already halfway to the roof service door when a violet-black flash erupted up from Dead Man Alley, an eruption of black light so quick and quiet that Martin did not see, hear or even sense it.

Martin carried the box of Rose’s things, every remnant of their time together up to the roof. He had done a sweep to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, and felt reassured that he had been thorough. The last thing that he grabbed were the black roses and the lily. Martin set the box down, not wanting to look down into the alleyway. He felt sick inside, lightheaded. He threw her things over one by one. As he threw them, he realized that he couldn’t hear anything landing. He had expected the perfume bottle to shatter, but had heard nothing. He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. He was not bothered by gore in the slightest, as he had created more than his fair share in his time but he did not want to look at what was left of Rose. He did not want that to be his last memory of her – he did not want another corpse taking the place in his memories where loved ones had been. He steeled himself and walked over. There was no reason whatsoever that he should not have heard her things falling and breaking in the alley. He was not afraid of being caught – this was the Fugue Feast, after all. He was not sure what he was afraid of. He leaned slightly out from the ledge and looked down. There was nothing there. No body, none of Rose’s things. The alleyway was empty. Martin dropped the black roses and the lily into the alleyway, watching in awe-struck horror as they evaporated into black wisps and tiny motes of dark matter before they hit the ground. Martin backed away from the ledge, unable to accept what he had just seen. Was he still dreaming?

Martin walked down to his rooms in a stunned silence. His mind was static, his thoughts disjointed as they echoed through his head. She was fading inside of him. He could feel her leaving him. By the time he got to his rooms, she was gone from his heart – taking the last of the bond with her. Martin began straightening up the rooms, cleaning and storing away in his trunk his many artifacts he had collected over the years. He locked his trunk, and did a final sweep to make sure he had left nothing important behind. The table in the kitchenette was bare, and the few dishes he had were put away. He left the various liquor bottles there – perhaps one day he’d come back for them. He shut off the valves for the water, and for the whale oil, and unhooked and secured the whale oil tanks. He did not plan to come back for a while, so he packed the things he knew he would need into his old rucksack. When Martin was finished, and the apartment dark and quiet, he closed and locked his door and then walked out into the streets of Dunwall aimlessly, his face blank as he allowed the Fugue Feast currents of color, of light, of sound and smell to wash over and through him, picking his insides clean and empty as he made his way back to the Office of the High Overseer.

****

**Epilogue: Martin, Dunwall 1837**

Martin did not return to the apartment until 1837. When Corvo Attano freed him from the stocks in Holger Square, Martin made his way to the Hounds Pit Pub as planned. Once there, he found himself unable to sleep. Havelock had offered him a comfortable enough cot in his room, but something about Havelock’s room bothered him, and he didn’t know why. He had never been inside the Hounds Pit Pub, but he felt like he had seen that room before. It made him uneasy. He took care of the business of planning and strategizing while bent over maps and diagrams and notes at Havelock’s desk, but when he was done at the end of each day, he found himself staying up later and later to avoid sleep. His old building was only a couple of blocks away, and he assured Havelock that there would be no issues with him staying away from the Hounds Pit Pub at night. “Hell, I can see this place from there.” No one seemed to mind if he slept elsewhere, so he decided to do so. He had some business to attend to with Daud and this apartment would be the perfect place to plan and finalize the contract. It was dark and cold in the apartment, and Martin stumbled around hooking up the old oil lines, and turning on the taps. Once he got the lamps lit, he looked around at the bare apartment. Something on the table caught his eye. Strange, he was sure he had cleared everything when he left. As he walked over and saw what it was, he felt himself growing faint. No. This could not be. On the table was a note: “I’ll see you at the lighthouse, my love”, and beside it a freshly cut single black rose. 

**Epilogue: Rose, Baleton 1833**

Just off shore, not far out from the rocks at the bottom of the cliff under the lighthouse a small eddy formed on the surface of the choppy water. A collection of red tendrils surfaced and swirled on the surface of the water. Old Wickie Baley watched it from the gallery up on top of the lighthouse, wondering what sort of strange seaweed was floating up now. He had seen all sorts of flotsam in his years as the Lighthouse keeper, some of it interesting but most of it junk. He had never seen anything like this though. The storm must have stirred up the bottom something fierce, bringing up something that otherwise would never have seen the light of day. He could feel the rumble of thunder in his bones, though he couldn’t hear it. His hearing had finally gone completely just a few months ago, but he couldn’t say he missed it. Not really. He watched the clump of seaweed with a growing interest as it seemed to be floating closer to shore. Maybe if it got close enough he could hook it in and take a look at it. There were strange things living at the bottom of the sea, he knew. He strained to see it more clearly through the chop of the water. He could just make out a small domed shape rising up out of the unusual red fronds as it slowly surfaced. It rose more, and when he saw what it was he was struck by a terror that kept him firmly in place. He wanted to look away, but could not. As it rose further from the sea, its eyes - wide open, unblinking and unseeing surfaced above the water. Sea water streamed from its nose and mouth. Then a pale slender neck, and then a sodden white dress clinging to heavy full breasts – by the gods, it was a woman, a _dead_ woman walking in from under the sea!

It made its way to shore, the long white dress plastered wetly to its heavy swollen form, long red hair hanging in thick wet tangles around its bloodless face. It made no noise, just trudged barefooted on white wrinkled feet up onto the rocks where it heaved itself down on to a small spit of sandy shore between the rocks with a heavy wet flop. When seawater and sand and seaweed began to purge itself violently from the body, streaming from every hole that it could escape, Wikie Baley felt his terror break into panic and he turned and ran back inside the lighthouse, running from the lantorn room all the way down the creaky winding stairs to his small quarters at the bottom of the lighthouse. He covered his head with his blankets, cowering on his small bed and begging whatever gods were listening to please let him wake up.

Down on the shore, the last of the seawater purged from the woman and with her first drawn breath screamed as her body clenched mindlessly in on itself, waves of contractions wracking her small form. Her brain was sodden and slow, a mass of cold jelly in her skull. She didn’t know who she was. What she was. Where she was. She felt herself tearing open from the inside, something forcing its way out of her and then suddenly it was born into existence: something obscenely wet and glistening, a pale purple-gray thing with no face, bloody and streaked with a thick white substance. She looked down at what it was that had torn from her body, and she knew what to do. She chewed apart the connection between them, the thick purple-gray cord that held them together leaving cold dark watery fluid trickling down her chin from her teeth. She gently tugged away the thick pasty-white veil of skin from the baby’s face and pulled the small still body to her cold white breast, and the two of them rocked together on the icy shore of Baleton as life and warmth slowly flooded back into both of them. She could remember her name now. Rose. Rose Everleigh. Rose looked down at the baby’s small wrinkled face and stroked the tiny bluish lips as they slowly pinked up with life, and traced the curves of the small ears, jugged out almost comically like her father’s even at birth. The baby’s eyes opened and Rose looked into them and said “Lily”. 

Deep inside the Void, the Outsider smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Fade Into You by Mazzy Star sums up the general tone of this story and sadness that I felt after finishing it. It became Martin and Rose's song. This story wasn't intended to be more than your basic dark erotic fantasy (okay, _smut_ , whatever) but it became something more. Martin and Rose became more real as I wrote them, and what developed between them outside of all the kink took me by surprise. Each had their own fates that could not be avoided though, and in the end there was just emptiness and sadness and futility. I can't let it end here though. There is one more moment for them, and it waits for them in Baleton. Daud isn't a sentimental sort of guy at all, but I don't think he'll mind if I set aside a moment for them in his story. It might just end up working to his advantage.


End file.
